Japan. Contrary as it is to what one would expect of the youth of this go-ahead nation, most with whom I have talked on the subject have expressed the same opinion.'

One peep may be had into the conservative psychology of the Oriental woman herself. We will quote from the latest pronouncement made on the subject of veils and feminine emancipation by the Begam of Bhopal, because in many ways she is a progressive woman, and also because she recently issued a volume in which she bared her soul (and face, too, for that matter, for her photograph is reproduced in it), pointing out, in the course of the book, that man's selfishness keeps woman ignorant. Giving her mature reflections on her recent European tour, her Highness said:

I do not much care for the liberty that oversteps the limit of propriety. I am sure that our purdanashin ladies. have no idea of the extent of the liberty of the women of Europe. . I have no hesitation in saying that that liberty is utterly unsuited to the conditions of this country, and particularly in the case of Mohammedans. . . . We must act on the precious saying of our Prophet "... Take only that which is clean. ... Mohammedan women should never think of overstepping the limits placed on their liberty. . . . The Turkish ladies . . . seem to be just a little inclined towards adopting the ways of European liberty, and this gives rise to a fear in my heart that these ways may prove full of some dangers to them.'

Comment, other than that her Highness considers the veil to be imposed by the tenets of Islam, and went about Europe enshrouded in a burq'a, as she has done in India throughout her life, is superfluous.

In the face of this conservatism, the Orient is moving forward -not only the Orient of the men, but also of the women.

SAINT NIHAL SINGH.

THE NEW RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE

I. L'Orientation Religieuse de la France actuelle. Par PAUL SABATIER. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin. 1912.

2. La Crise Française. Par ANDRÉ CHÉRADAME. Paris: Librairie Plon.

1912.

3. Pour la Patrie. Par LE COmte Albert de MUN (de l'Académie Française). Paris: Émile-Paul. 1912.

4. La Renaissance de l'Orgueil Français. Par ÉTIENNE REY. Paris: Bernard Grasset. 1912.

'She shall rise worthier of her prototype

Thro' her abasement deep; the pain that runs
From nerve to nerve some victory achieves.
They lie like circle-strewn, soaked Autumn-leaves
Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!
And of their death her life is of their blood
From many streams now urging to a flood,
No more divided, France shall rise afresh.'

France, December 1870. By GEORGE MEREdith.

O country offers such fascinating fields for moral survey as

lightness which events, during the last hundred years or so, do not seem to have belied. Her course has been singularly varied-now up, now down, now on the crest of the wave, now in the trough. While German development has been regularly ascensional, the French graph is a series of tormented lines. If descent has been rapid, equally rapid has been the rise. For some time a crisis has affected her, so obvious as to attract the attention of the superficial. But if that period seems now to have passed, there are problems enough left to exercise her philosophy and even to inspire our anxiety. Disorder reigns. One instance of it is the activity of the Apache, while the prevalence of juvenile crime has startled every observer. Maître Henri Robert, the well-known criminal lawyer, has devoted a lecture to the subject, deploring the precocity of many of the persons charged with serious offences. Alcoholism has increased to an incredible extent amongst the working population, both in the towns and in many country districts. There are more dram-shops in Paris, the City of Light, than in

San Francisco, and eleven times more than in London. The increase in the number of young men rejected from military service for physical disability, and the increase in insanity and criminality, are largely traceable to this cause.

'Is it not humiliating to state,' asks M. André Chéradame in 'La Crise Française,'' that the French people, who are amongst 'the most civilised in the world, allow themselves to be degene'rated and decimated by alcohol just like the Redskins of the American Far West and the inferior native races of the 'globe?'

So much for demoralisation by drink. In public life, scandals have thrown a lurid light on the morality of officials. Writers of current literature leave us to infer that disinterestedness is dead-buried with the honesty of politicians and the virtue of their wives. Statistics darken rather than lighten the shadows. The number of babies and the number of churchgoers are diminishing in about the same proportions. Half a century ago a million children were born into France each year; now the number has fallen to 742,000, representing an excess of nearly thirty-five thousand deaths. The village churches are as unpeopled as the village hearths. In many cases the curé, unable to live upon the offerings of the faithful, turns to supplementary occupations.

Again, unbelief loosens the bond between the citizen and the Church. The priest is half suspected of being an impostor. The number of Easter communicants-sign of the vitality of the Church-has seriously declined in industrial districts. The number of religious marriages has followed the same line of descent. If the rites of the Church in baptism, communion, marriage and burial are still observed even in professedly freethinking quarters, it is due to the social conservatism that is instinctive with the peasantry. Ferocious anti-clericalism has departed before the consciousness that it was pandering to the worst instincts of the nation; but indifference remains.

Foreigners, perhaps, express the most lively concern for the religious future of France, realising that with her fate is largely bound up that of Christendom. Will the same evils befall us? is the inevitable reflection. Hodie mihi, cras tibi.' France is the intellectual centre of the world. Anti-militarism, sabotage, syndicalism have attacked the universe, after having made their appearance on French soil. In the same way, the

scepticism which first sprang up in France has influenced every religious community. Nor is the unrest in England likely to follow a line essentially different from that adopted by the French workers two or three years ago. The general curve of democracy is first traced in France.

In religious matters France has reason to be disquieted. The Church was disestablished and disendowed with the smallest display of opposition. Save in isolated instances it seemed to arouse little feeling. Since that time the difficulties, moral and material, of Catholics have increased. The subject of ways and means is a constant preoccupation, and the absence of diocesan and parochial balance-sheets a negative sign of precarious resources. Secret by tradition, the Church is unwilling to expose her financial weakness to unsympathetic eyes.

And yet there is considerable quickening of the Catholic body. A proselytising zeal consumes the priesthood. The younger clergy, mounted on bicycles, cover large districts and economise staffs. They carry spiritual comfort to the farmhouse and stimulate the château to good works. Social effort is vigorous in large centres. Church clubs and societies minister to young people's need for recreation and amusement. Catholic philanthropists interest themselves in the condition of the working baker, forced to labour throughout the night, in the miner, the shop assistant and factory-hand, and in the reclamation of fallen women. Fashionable fanes in Paris and the large towns keep their congregations and increase the proportion of men. But this activity serves only to accentuate the void. A well-known bishop (Mgr. Dadolle) declared recently to the Holy See that the number of practising Catholics in France did not exceed four or five millions, leaving thirty millions outside the fold. In the eloquence of these figures lies the true state of Catholic France. To argue that the Church must eventually disappear is to argue against probability and to ignore the strength of organised religion. But that its active exercise will cease in country parts within a limited space, unless a reaction takes place, is only too apparent. At first sight the reluctance of the peasant to give tithe is evidence of materialism. And this trait seems accompanied by some loss of old-time virtues, such as courtesy, candour and civic courage. These things are alleged by persons having a

long acquaintance with France, who profess to find in the rural population a less fine sense of honour than existed before the war. Added to this is juvenile depravity. And the unctuous Englishman, after three weeks' stay in France, rubs his hands and says What did I tell you? There is neither religion 'nor morals here. Is not the dwindling population proof of 'God's doom upon the nation?

Some excuse exists for this view. The visitor has looked around and found apparent evidence of decay. He has gone to the music-halls and theatres and seen plays and spectacles of a perverted sort; he has glanced at volumes on the railway bookstalls and been disgusted at their cynicism and wanton tone. Perhaps he has attended the cathedral of a provincial city and heard the preacher denounce the un-Christian teaching of the elementary schools. Or he has read a newspaper in which some deputy of the Right has attacked the Government for a scandal affecting the probity of its officials. 'What! call this a Christian country, a community with ' religious instincts! Impossible!' But perhaps later he has returned to France and found facts that did not square with his first impressions. He has found a strong movement against pornography and against the pandering to vice of cosmopolitan purveyors. He has seen the Government initiate measures against the White Slave trade. In the Legislature, Bills have passed ensuring Sunday rest for workers, the protection of women's wages, and the safeguarding of the fille mère.' Are these symptoms of irreligion and decadence, he wonders? And he may realise that juvenile criminality is due not so much to widespread depravity as to a wrong application of the laws, an overstrained sense of humanity, which leads juries to liberate when they should convict. And this mistaken clemency is exercised in as large a proportion as one-third of the cases presented.

France has exhibited strength in unexpected ways. Her young men have adopted sport. They have shown remarkable aptitude in golf, tennis and football, and notably in boxing. Who supposed that a French Rugby team would beat Scotland one day, or that a French boxer would become a champion of the world? More recently a French girl has carried off the Ladies' Championship in tennis, and the national successes in golf are frequent. Even when beaten in their games, the French