Wing Sing's conscience straightened out its painful kinks. At that moment he would almost have been willing to watch the hatchetman do his dreadful deed. But after supper, when he was permitted to go outside, his steps instinctively led him near Lee's door, and the influence of the mission teaching again assailed him.

While he watched, the door opened and Lee appeared and crossed the street to make a purchase at a fruit-stand. Wing Sing almost clutched the man's blouse as he passed him, resisting with difficulty the impulse to cry aloud a warning to the highbinder's prey, but the boy restrained himself with a subtle instinct of caution. He went home trembling with excite

ment.

"Father, you like me to do what my teacher tells ?" he cried.

"Teachers are always to be obeyed," replied Fun Choi. "The teacher of my son is very learned, though she is a wo

man.

She will make Wing Sing an honorable man if he follows her wise counsel." With this oracular utterance ringing in his ears, Wing Sing again went out, this time doubly fortified to do his Christian duty.

Fun Choi was an indulgent father, and allowed his son to remain out-of-doors until half-past eight on summer evenings. It was ten minutes past eight when the door once more slammed behind Wing. Sing. Lee's door was closed, and there was no light within. Perhaps by this time he was wending his way up the fateful Crooked Alley.

Wing's methodical brain for once was in a sad muddle, but he gathered his scattered wits to work on the only means possible. He first recklessly tore out a page of his greatly prized Reader, and, sitting on the steps of his father's shop, laboriously wrote a warning message in carefully formed English letters.

The letter read thus:

"Ah Lee, if you go to crukid allee tonight you big fool.

66 You look out. Hatchetman Hide to Kill you. I hear him Talk. Your Bones never go back to China burying."

The fierce prediction in the closing sentence was inserted as a sop to that part of Wing Sing's conscience which sympathized with his father, although the

tone of contempt was not quite consistent with the good-fellowship of the warning.

With a beating heart, he watched for a lull in the stream of passers-by which would give him the opportunity to place the paper under Lee's door. A knot of curious tourists followed their guide around a corner, and the block for the moment was deserted.

Wing Sing quickly crossed the street. He had slipped but one end of the note under the sill when a sudden noise from within alarmed him.

It would never do for the son of Ah Lee's enemy to be caught in such an undignified act. Wing Sing, therefore, ignominiously took to his heels, and did not look back until he reached the shelter of his own premises, where, putting aside a corner of the old green silk curtain, he saw a light stream out into the street as Lee's door opened and the paper was picked up.

For an instant the door remained ajar, then it was quickly banged, the shutters closed, and the abode of Ah Lee gave no further sign of life.

Two days later Miss Trent was surprised to receive a call from a courteous, strange Chinese, who listened with interest to the exercises of the school, and, before bowing himself out, insisted upon leaving with her a little sandalwood box containing a twenty-dollar gold piece.

"From my flend to lady who teach her Chinaboys be kind to enemy," he said.

Miss Trent protested in vain. She saw that he would be highly offended if she refused, so she said: "Thank you very much. I will give it to the ladies of the Board, and they will use it to send other boys to school." But the man had gone while she spoke, satisfied that his errand was accomplished.

When Wing Sing returned from school that afternoon, he found his father rejoicing over the unexpected windfall of one hundred dollars, sent by an unknown hand.

On a strip of red paper were inscribed the Chinese characters which read:

"Suitable portion is intended for Wing Sing, the eldest son of the honorable Fun Choi, the studious youth whom his countrymen admire, and who writes his name so skillfully upon the white page of his study-book."

Trooper 38091

A story of real life always has a direct touch. "Trooper 3809" has that touch in an exceptional degree.

While the author, Mr. Lionel Decle, is of French birth, he received his education in England. He returned to France for his military service, and then again to England. Hence he is able to take an international view of affairs. His narration is stronger than the somewhat similar one published last year by M. Urbain Gohier under the title L'Armée contre

66

by identical measures of discipline is an impossible one: equality of punishment may sound well in theory, but in practice it becomes rank inequality. He attempts to show that in Germany, where there is also the reduced service of one year for young men who have fulfilled conditions of higher education, the system works better, because these form a class absolutely distinct, in uniform, lodgment, and treatment, from other privates.

Mr. Decle's description of the sanitary conditions which have existed in the French army is disheartening.

In his

orous writer were so virulent and his attacks so indiscriminate as to lose some

In 1879 Mr. Decle went into the French army. At that time the period of service was five years instead of three. But one year's service was demanded of him, however; he came under the provision for those who had the degree of B.A. or B.S., provided they paid three hundred dollars to the Government, and provided that they contracted a voluntary engagement within the year preceding that in which they became liable to conscription. If the experiences of other French soldiers are like those endured by Mr. Decle during his term of service, it is no wonder that conscription is still regarded in France as absolutely necessary.

Comparing France with England, Mr. Decle declares that, taken as a whole, the lowest classes in the French cities are

Our

more degraded than the people belonging to the same class of society across the Channel. Instead of raising this class to a higher level, the French military service only brings down to their plane those who belong to the better classes. For men possessing any self-respect, says author, the three years which every ablebodied Frenchman has to serve in the army are nothing but a period of ceaseless degradation. He declares that a system in which gentlemen of refinement and the vilest dregs of the city slums are subjected to identical treatment and ruled

1 Trooper 3809. By Lionel Decle. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.25.

bath. The hospital service was on the same plane of intelligence.

Most of the book, however, is an exposure of the poor system of French officering and the results which come from it. One blot on the system is that cavalry officers trust almost entirely to sergeants to look after the drill, discipline, and comfort of their men. During Mr. Decle's cavalry service the colonel came to the barracks, perhaps, twice a month, and then rarely stayed there for an hour at a time. Except during the general yearly inspection the lieutenant-colonel and majors did not pass once a month through the squadron-rooms. True, the captain in command of Mr. Decle's squadron. sometimes came to their room, but a fortnight or three weeks often elapsed between his visits. Mr. Decle's lieutenant came

to the squadron-room on the weekly inspection day, but rarely at other times.

As to the drill, during the first five months' preliminary training troopers were left entirely to the care of sergeants and corporals.

Mr. Decle draws a comparison between the hard-and-fast lines of social distinction which exist between French officers of different ranks and the English system, where all officers mess together, meeting in the simple equality of gentlemen, idea is, of course, a fatal obstacle for the corporate well-being of a regiment, yet in France the idea seems to obtain that

The first

captains would lower themselves if they sat at the same table with lieutenants and sub-lieutenants.

The account of the various punishments which Mr. Decle endured constitutes the book's chief value. Our author is careful to acknowledge that some of these were deserved, but he shows that he paid unjust and undue penalties. Rather than have served another year he would have become a deserter. It is with a shock that one learns of the severity of punish ments in the French army. The mere act of striking a superior, from a corporal upward, is punishable with death, even in time of peace. Mr. Decle tells us of two instances which occurred while he was serving. In the first place, a private had struck a corporal who had bullied him in a most shameful way; in the second in stance, a corporal had struck an officer who had called his mother by a vile name. Both men were found guilty and publicly shot in the presence of their regiment on special parade. From this the character of the penalties for lesser offenses may be imagined. The bullying of privates by corporals and sergeants, says Mr. Decle, is now just as bad as it was in his time. The officers are jealous of each other, and, instead of encouraging privates to love their profession, they chiefly strive to find or manufacture defaulters, well knowing that by so doing they will attract their chief's attention and thus get advancement. One of Mr. Decle's corporals, an old schoolfellow of his, who had actually accepted luncheon from him the previous day, did not hesitate unjustly to denounce him. After reading this, we understand better the machinations which led to the denouncing in the General Staff both of Dreyfus and of Picquart.

Incidentally the work throws an interesting side-light on the Dreyfus case. The bitter and protracted discussions which have arisen out of this case have concentrated the attention of the world on the French army, but Mr. Decle believes that no one has done more to disgrace it and to lower it, in the eyes of friends and foes alike, than Frenchmen themselves. The Dreyfusards have made superhuman efforts to further the cause of justice and to obtain the redress of one of the greatest wrongs ever committed against a human being. We agree

with our author, however, that they have somewhat spoiled their task by indiscriminate and wholesale abuse of the army in general, holding thousands of French officers responsible for the conduct of a few of their number. On the other hand, the anti-Dreyfusards base their conviction upon a blind belief in the infallibility of half a dozen officers who, in 1894, had passed judgment upon Dreyfus. Mr. Decle declares that the prisoner's case is, unfortunately, but a greatly magnified example of what daily happens throughout the French army. He tries to show that Dreyfus has been a victim not so much of the malice of individuals as of a faulty system. While we may disagree in part with this opinion, his exposure of the conditions which obtain in the French army does show (1) that the colonel of a regiment forms his opinion of a private from the character given to him by his corporal or sergeant; (2) that the mere fact of appealing against a punishment is considered as an act of insubordination; (3) that a judgment once given must needs be upheld without considering upon what grounds or evidence it has been delivered; (4) that no man in the French army may appeal against a punishment until he has undergone the whole of it. There is still no higher appeal than to the Colonel. Such a thing as a private, or even an officer, having the right to ask for a court martial in case he considers himself unjustly punished does not exist.

Aside from this special and timely significance, as a mere story of military life "Trooper 3809" is worthy of note. Nor is the book's significance connected with the Dreyfus affair or with France alone; it also throws light upon other countries in which militarism exercises an undue influence, and bids us contemplate the burdens, seen and unseen, which are oppressing the people of such lands.

Potable Water, by M. N. Baker, editor of the "Manual of American WaterWorks," is an authoritative little book designed, not for engineers, but for public officials and public-spirited men and women interested in the subject of a pure water supply. The work is well done. (The Van Nostrand Company, New York.)

The Science of Religion' In his former volume Dr. Tiele dealt with the varying religions resulting from the continuous evolution of religion. This we reviewed last year. In the present volume he deals with the ontological " as distinct from the "morphological " part of his subject-the origin and nature of religion, the constant essence in its changing forms. He discriminates religion from religious doctrine, with which it is often confounded, and from philosophy, which, on account of this confusion, often attacks it. Religion, which clothes itself in an ever changing garb of doctrines as its enlightenment advances, originates in "man's original, unconscious, innate sense of infinity." Dr. Tiele adopts and insists upon Dr. Edward Caird's view, in his lectures on "The Evolution of Religion," that in the human mind the idea of the infinite is anterior to that of the finite. It "is the specifically human element in man." It does not come to us by experience, for it conflicts with our experience of a finite world. It is not the product of reasoning, though supported by it. "It is born with us, and we cannot choose

but think it. We act unconsciously as if we were infinite. Infinity is the mainspring of all human development." From this groundwork of our being, however unconscious man be of what it is, spring those emotions, conceptions, and will-attitudes in which consists religion, the very postulate and condition of which is man's belief in some kinship between himself and the invisible superhuman Power he adores. In fact, "not only that God - is above us,' but also that God is in us,' is a belief common to all religions," and reaches its full development in primitive Christianity. Anthropomorphism is therefore indispensable to religion, for, although all human predicates be inadequate when ascribed to Deity, we cannot ascribe less to God than the personality and self-consciousness which belong among our highest conceptions of life.

But religion differs from philosophy in being practical, not speculative. Religious doctrine, or theology, is a borrower from

Elements of the Science of Religion. Part II, Cntological, being the Ciford Lectures delivered before the University of Edinburgh in 1863. by C. P. Tiele. Profes sor of the History and Philosophy of Religion in the University of Leyden. In Two Volumes. Vol. 11. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

philosophy, but not religion itself, which is, above all, a doctrine of salvation, a guide to a blessed life." Corresponding

to its three constituents of emotions, conceptions, and will-attitudes (“ sentiments," as Dr. Tiele calls them), are the three "root-ideas" of religion:

In a thousand varieties .. we invariably find these three elements: belief in a divine power upon which we are dependent; belief in the high origin and destiny of man, coupled with a consciousness of his shortcomings; and belief in the possibility of salvation, combined with attempts to secure that blessed consummation. All religions are religions of redemption, and all religious doctrine is a doctrine of salvation. This is one of the most strik

ing and at the same time most certain results

of our science.

Underlying these three root-ideas Dr. Tiele finds the essence of religion to be "essentially a frame of mind in which all its various elements have their source." This is not faith, for faith belongs also both to science and art, although without is possible. "Religion is piety," says faith no religion, nor either science or art, Dr. Tiele, but prefers the word "adoration," as expressing the essence of gen uine piety, which desires to possess and to be possessed by its adored object-a sentiment whose germ he discovers even in primitive and barbarous religions, and

which demands that closest communion, the divine, which forms the characteristic that perfect union" of the human with of religion as emanating directly from aim of all religion." Such is the essence "the distinctive badge" of our humanity

the Infinite within. Its natural and necessary manifestation is in worship, particularly in the form of prayer; and all true worship involves a sacrificial element in the constant rededication of self to God.

But religion, like other human experiences, has its morbid developments.

There is religiosity as well as religion,

and it is due to the lack of due proportion in one or other of the three constituents fanaticism. If the importance of concepof religion. Emotion in excess breeds tions be overrated, orthodoxy is substituted for religion. Those to whom will-attitude, or "sentiment," is everything may even justify inhumanity if done in the name of religion. Sentiment, however virtuous, "unless deeply rooted in emotion, cannot be called religious." This may be questioned. Elsewhere Dr. Tiele makes, as

we think, too wide a gap between morality and religion. Morality in his view is limited to our earthly existence and relations; a limitation which better suits another word in his vocabulary, moralism." Truly describing the object of religion as "peace of soul, the true and eternal life, unity with God," he does not see that just this is ideal morality, as distinct from superficial and imperfect conceptions of it. Morality that is perfect cannot be limited to the relations of finite moral beings; it must include their relations with the Infinite to whom they feel themselves akin. The feeling of kinship between the finite moral nature and the Infinite, in which religion originates, is as fully entitled to the name "moral" as to the name 66 religious."

Dr. Tiele develops his subject on a strictly psychological line, apart from the domain of metaphysics and dogmatics, and in a critical comparison of the diverging or conflicting views of other writers, both Christian and skeptical. He holds no brief for any creed or church, while pointing out that every form of religion requires a league of sympathizers," and that all local unions of this kind gravitate toward a general union. Thus the conception of a universal church, however falsely bound to some transitory institution," contains the germ of a great truth, and is the similitude of a well-founded expectation." He looks to see this ultimately realized in local organizations linked for fellowship, not for administrative government. Should they prefer to call their union a Brotherhood or a League, yet "it would be a church" all the same, and "a more excellent realization of the great ideal."

So eminent a physicist as the late Professor Tyndall declared it "the problem of problems" to yield reasonable satisfaction to the religious feelings, which he recognized as having rights quite as strong as those of the understanding. Strikingly in accord is this with Dr. Tiele's declaration, from the opposite quarter of the scientific field, that "the right of religion is a right of the emotions," that the emotions no less than the reasoning powers have the'r inalienable rights, and that to pronounce religion an illusion because emotional would make human existence an insoluble riddle." If religion constantly

provokes the censure of philosophy, it is because its garb of doctrines is not renewed as fast as it becomes outworn. But since "a religion without forms is lost in indefiniteness,"

to create or to recast these forms, and to clothe the constant religious element in images adapted to the wants of the most advanced members of the existing generation, is the vocation of those who are not satisfied to be merely the guardians of a venerable tradition, and the learned interpreters of sacred texts, but who, as prophets themselves, bear witness in inspired language to what God has implanted in their hearts; and not merely as ministers of the cult, but also as free witnesses of the divine spirit, as poets by the grace of God, as religious thinkers, as leaders of relig ious life.

Books of the Week

[The books mentioned under this head were received by The Outlook during the week ending September 1. Prices will be found under the head of Books Received in the preceding issue of The Outlook. This weekly report of current iterature will be supplemented by fuller reviews of the more important works.]

Mr. Belfort Bax's series on "The 'Social Side of the German Reformation" is becoming an indispensable one to the ological or sociological students. The second volume has now appeared, and has to do with The Peasants' War, 1525-6 (The Macmillan Company, New York). A comprehensive map helps the reader's understanding of the author's excellent and detailed but not too picturesque text. The publishers' work, in paper, printing, color, and texture of binding, leaves nothing to be desired.

66

Dr. Ruric Roark, Dean of the Department of Pedagogy in the State College of Kentucky, has published a work on Method in Education, the second volume in a series of which the author's Psychology in Education" is the first. As may be gathered from the title, Dr. Roark's latest book attempts to develop in detail the application of psychology in the work of teaching.. The book is clearly thought out and clearly expressed. It will serve in answering the daily more persistent questions as to method in education-questions so universal that most colleges and universities have now added departments of pedagogy to those already existing. Dr. Roark well points out that a teacher needs more than sound and broad scholar.ship, more than sympathetic knowledge of mind-processes; a teacher must also have skill in making the mind hungry for