gested itself to me on my daily rounds.

The

Small trace of them can I find! working-class mother seldom regards herself as an individual; pain must be very acute, danger imminent, before any sense of personal rights or duty to herself can be roused, and even then the quickening motive is a sudden inward vision of "what might happen to 'em if I was took." When persuading a woman subject to bronchitis, and with a bad family history of rheumatism or phthisis, to buy a mangle and wringer in preference to a piano, it is useless to tell her that her sufferings should count before her little daughter's very doubtful pleasure: one can only dwell upon the inconvenience caused to the whole family when she is ill, or the needless discomfort endured by her husband if the half-wrung clothes are "still about" when he returns from work.

Many of the greatest injuries to health are caused by cold, unsuitable clothing, reckless over-exertion, indifference as to proper drainage and water-supply, and needless exposure to infection. Nothing but regular teaching in schools and continuation classes, and the combined efforts of district visitors, district nurses, and other houseto-house workers, aided by the provision of brief and suitable "earthly tracts," will ever bring home to the ordinary laborer's wife a full sense of her duties and opportunities as guardian of the family health. The fact of infection, except for a chance outbreak here and there of selfish panic, is still far too little felt. A friend of mine, staying in a West Country town, was told that a woman whom she knew had, as an act of charity, first spent two hours in the room of a small-pox patient, and then played the organ in a crowded church. In reply to her horrified remonstrance, she was told tauntingly: "We are not afraid," and could

She

Serious ill-health often results from the excessive value placed by a woman on a small monetary gain, coupled with her indifference to the expenditure of time and strength absorbed in earning it. A delicate woman living on a tiny pension and the produce of her garden refused in my hearing to sell a sack of potatoes, although the would-be purchaser offered to fetch it from her house and pay for it immediately. afterwards told me that she preferred selling potatoes twenty pounds at a time and carrying them in a basket to the customer's house, perhaps two miles away, because in this way she could get a slightly higher price. The fatigue and exhaustion, even the wear and tear of clothes, and the risk that the potatoes, if too long kept, might turn bad, all counted for nothing. She happened to be a country woman by birth, but thirty years of her life had been spent in London. The story is characteristic of a certain stage of mental cultivation, and has no necessary connection with either urban or rural conditions.

One of the most lastingly injurious forms that can be taken by the maternal ignorance of the requirements of health is the belief that there is "plenty" for a daughter at home, and that there is "no need" for her to go out to work,-with the natural result that she is presently unable to do so. I recently went into a dirty, neglected house where a pale, white-handed woman, wrapped in a shawl, sat over a fire reading a fashion-book. It was a sunny afternoon in May. Her widowed mother, in receipt of an old-age pension, and with some small additional means, and still earning a trifle here and there, explained that she was anæmic. Thinking that the best plan would be to get the young woman out of such unfavorable surroundings, I

together until the pension was granted passes understanding, and if the mother died to-morrow the daughter would have no resource but the workhouse. Needless to say, the mother was buying patent medicines for her; but when I asked if she had any milk, the reply was: "Oh, yes, she likes it. I generally get a drop of a Friday when I'm passing down that way."

"Unchartered freedom" put to such uses as this may well rouse a passing desire for the discipline that Socialism would bring in its wake, though in saner moments we realize that "Hasten slowly" is our safest guide to the fardistant goal of sound national health. M. Loane.

This is an age of condensation. Even our mania for speed is but one phase of this universal passion, for pace-making is but the attempt to put the maximum of space into a minimum of time. The youth who, when asked why he wired in applying for a berth instead of writing through the post, replied by wire, "No time write full these days fierce comp.," was the successful candidate. And this is the tendency of the present age. It is just the same with men as machines. The individual who can produce more work in a given time necessarily in the scheme of universal economy passes and supersedes him whose energy or power of concentration is less. Even artists and men of letters are not excepted from this stress of competition, and the reader of the day shuns the leisurely and voluminous essays, philosophy and fiction of yesterday, and prefers the volume which can be read at a sitting, or, better still, a newspaper or periodical which presents the news and topics

of the day in short, concise paragraphs. An idea in the current journalistic jargon may be best defined as a short cut to something, a new and shorter way of doing something which hitherto has taken more time. And all progress proceeds upon these lines or by an incessant simplification or series of short and still shorter cuts.

It is the custom of the literary, the leisurely, and the elect to condemn this passion for speed and brevity as a race without any goal and as an utterly unreasonable madness leading only to anarchy or lunacy. It is, they cry, an age of snippets. Now, in this warning there is much wisdom, and it would be folly not to give it heed, but it requires some qualification. may be said that there is some reasoning in all folly, and the passion for brevity, for news rather than vaporish verses, for facts rather than fancies, for remedies rather than consolations, for prevention rather than compensation, and for speed rather than slack

It

ness, is no exception to this principle, and is, perhaps, but the perversion of a natural instinct.

For if we think of the matter more carefully we shall find that there is nothing evil in itself in this ideal of brevity, but rather good, for it is the natural manifestation of mind in the attempt to conquer matter. Its object is merely to annihilate mass and make mind the supreme master of the situation. According to Benedetto Croce every man is in essentia an artist, and, although it may seem to propose a paradox, nevertheless this labor is but the incessant, if sometimes misdirected, effort towards expression. Brevity is the natural aim of human endeavor; nay, it is even the law of evolution in nature. Nature always goes by the nearest and shortest cut, or, as Emerson has it, proceeds by a continual process of falling. To do anything which has hitherto appeared impossible, whether it has any immediate or present object or not, or to break a record of any kind, is in its aim artistic, if not in its accomplishment. Likewise the man who discovers a new fact, a new law of nature, a new planet; the explorer who penetrates hitherto unknown countries, is not less a poet (perhaps more) than the maker of inspired verses, the creator of ideas and images. The individual who does even anything in a new or better way, or who does something which has not been done before, is, in some degree, according to its importance, a poet. There is a very simple manner in which any man may become a poet if he cares to be one. It is by going to any place into which no man before him has ever put a foot. Who, reading the narratives of Captain Peary and Sir Ernest Shackleton in the right spirit, did not feel that these men were poets? Or again, which contains the most true poetry, the histories of Captain Cook's voyages, of the travels of Mungo Park

and Columbus, or the fictitious narratives of "Munchausen" or Louis de Rougemont? But this is a digression. Howbeit, it is a fact that all men are in essence artists even in action, their common aim towards conquest, knowledge, and power, which are but other words for brevity.

And if this is true of action it is not less true of art and literature. Let us sneer at the snippet as we may, but the fault is not one of dimension. It would be possible to dismiss the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the maxims of Seneca and Epictetus, or the Pensées of Pascal, as snippets on the score of dimension. But art and truth, and, although it may be a trifle precipitous, we may add brevity itself, is not merely a matter of dimension. If the snippet is merely a snippet, then one may ask whose fault is that, the reader's or the artist's? There is nothing inconsistent with truth in brevity, and there is no limit to what may be said simply and naturally in half-adozen lines, if a man only has something to say, and the art to say it. The value of the "snippet" depends upon what has been said in it. if a man really has anything impressive or urgent to communicate, it is to be suspected that it will not be long before we arrive at the matter of it. It would be too startling to propose that the importance of any oration diminishes in inverse ratio or by the square of the time taken to deliver it, though there would be some whimsical truth in such a proposition. But it may be proposed without any reverse whatever that there is nothing which would not be improved by condensation if this could be accomplished without injury to, or loss of, the complete expression. One cannot say, for instance, that any poem of five verses is better than any poem of six verses, but one can say with confidence that if the matter of the six verses could be put into five it

Nay,

would be better.

There is no value or excellence whatever in mere dimension as dimension, and there is nothing in literature which would not be better for being shorter if-omnipotent if-it could be made shorter. But, paradoxically, some poems, like Browning's "Sordello," and other pieces, are generally too short for brevity, and require lengthening or amplifying in order to abbreviate them. As it has been said, brevity is not merely a matter of dimension, and it is from this misunderstanding that the evil and stress of much modern competition arises. defeats its own object. The shortest way is in experience not always the nearest. If one cannot swim, rivers can only be crossed by boats or bridges.

It

Therefore let not the much-despised snippet be despised on the score of brevity, but only for more reasonable objections, as, for instance, that there is nothing in it, and this is often the fault of even larger works of ten or even a score of volumes. The literature of the future will probably consist largely of aphorisms, varying in length from six words to, perhaps, six hundred thousand. And therefore will it resemble more or less closely the best literature of the past. But still, as a rule, it is to be remembered as an axiom that one cannot obtain majesty in literature by mere mass. Books are not mountains. Even an epic of a thousand volumes would not attain majesty; it would merely not be read. Coleridge, Byron, Poe, and others, it will be recollected, declared a

The Nation.

long poem a contradiction in terms, Poe allowing an hour, then half-anhour, and, finally, about a hundred lines for a composition of this kind, and much can be said for this view. One might even carry it further and affirm that it is true also of prose compositions. In fiction the unity towards which every work should approach as nearly as the design permits is the anecdote; and of the prose essay, the unit, although difficult of attainment, should be the aphorism, the phrase, or the epigram. It is, of course, impossible always to attain this form, the work sometimes falling short by hundreds of thousands of words, but, if these are necessary to it, it will not be a colossal failure. Some account must be made of the original distance to be traversed, the burden to be conveyed, and other disadvantages.

There is, therefore, let it be concluded, not a little logic in the instinct which demands from the artist something that can be easily cognized, and it is from the same natural instinct that the unsophisticated person always views with suspicion a very long literary exercise as being not likely to contain any matter of very urgent importance for him. It may yield him a good deal of pleasure if he can get over this original disinclination and give the time to the reading, but he would always prefer that it should be shorter, and, moreover, he always thinks that a book could be, at least before he has read it. And if he still thinks so when he has read it, the artist has failed of this reader.

When Russia has turned eastwards in pursuit of a policy she has generally become entangled and weakened, and when she has confined her attention to

Europe she has, as a rule, done herself credit. There is much speculation as to what happened at M. Sazonoff's interviews at Potsdam; but, whatever be

the truth about details, it is fairly certain that Germany has been turning Russia's attention away from Europe. We do not say this in a cynical sense. It has long been obvious that Germany was awaiting the opportunity to discuss the affairs of the Middle East, and she would have wished to do so whether the tendencies of Russian history had been as we have stated them or not. But it was not to be expected that the German newspapers would fail to remember the secondary consideration that Russia fully employed elsewhere is less of a check on German predominance in Europe. A Turco-Persian dispute, for example, would leave Russia very little time to prosecute her ancient championship of the Balkan Slavs in the face of Austria-Hungary or PanGermanism. Although the details of the Russo-German discussion at Potsdam are not yet known, an alleged draft of a formal Agreement has been published by a London newspaper, the Evening Times, and it is nowhere denied that this draft has an air of probability. It is in four clauses. By the first Russia agrees not to oppose the Baghdad Railway; by the second a connection via Khanikin is provided for between the Baghdad Railway and the proposed Russian line in Northern Persia; by the third Germany agrees not to oppose Russian railway enterprise in Northern Persia; and by the fourth Germany is guaranteed "absolute equality of treatment" for her commerce in Persia. We do not say that Russia would lose in any way by this arrangement; but the German move is unquestionably clever and advantageous from the German point of view. The promise of equality of treatment for German commerce would be absolutely secured by the joining of the Baghdad and Persian systems. We cannot ourselves, however, conceive of any trans-Persian (or Indo-European, for that is what it coms to) system of

railways being run successfully except on the principle of freedom for all. Great Britain is not in the least likely to depart in this matter from her constant policy of the "open door." Nevertheless Germany is wise to turn strong probability into certainty. We always look on with pleasure at the destruction of monopolies, and if there be truth in the reported Agreement, there is not the least chance of Russia trying to make a monopoly out of her proposed railways in Northern Persia.

So far so good. The vision of a railway from the Caspian to British Baluchistan comes nearer realization if German jealousy has been appeased, and we are unfeignedly glad to think that this is so. But there must be still more behind all this. It stands to reason that Germany would not have arranged for the linking up of the Baghdad and Persian systems if she did not see her way more easily than before to the completion of the Baghdad Railway. Now it was always understood that Russia, France, and Great Britain would not join in the Baghdad Railway scheme without reference to the wishes of each other. We may assume, therefore, that Russia made known her policy in advance to Great Britain and France, or has managed to make promises without compromising the interests of either. We await further information on this subject with some concern; meanwhile we may accept the assurances that the negotiations have had, and still have, nothing to do with the relations of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente in Europe. The negotiations are said by German inspired papers to have been conducted on the assumption that the arrangement of power in Europe must needs remain as before. The first anxiety lest this should not be so caused a flutter throughout the whole Press of the Continent; but after M. Pichon's speech on Thursday we