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right principles. For this reason commend the course of the Boston ministers in making their protest. They were quite within their rights in doing so. And the sentiment which animated their protest is praiseworthy. It indicates a great ethical advance over the prevailing sentiment in the churches fifty years ago. It indicates that the Church will not condone a wrong method of making money because it has succeeded; that it will measure men, not by the money which they possess, nor even by their use of it, but by the way in which they have acquired it; that it will measure industry, not by its pecuniary profits, but by the conformity of its methods to ethical standards; and that the silence of the Church cannot be purchased nor its condemnation quieted by gifts.

Nevertheless, the proposed rejection of Mr. Rockefeller's gift rests on no coherent and self-consistent principle which is capable of general application in solving the question under what conditions trustees may prop erly receive gifts of money for the benevolent work with which they are charged. In our judgment, the refusal of the New York ministers to join in this protest was founded on sound ethical principles. It is not the business of a church, charitable organization, or missionary society to sit in judgment on the character of the contributions to its work. If it were once to enter on this difficult and extra-hazardous undertaking, the reception of money by the church or society might justly be regarded as an indorsement of the methods by which the money had been acquired. But if the church or society declines on principle to take into consideration the character of the donor, the statement that receiving money implies honor to the donor is not tenable. It is not true that to receive from a wrong-doer money made by wrongdoing is to approve or condone the wrong-doing. If any of the ministers who voted for this resolution live in the country, do they refuse to burn the Standard oil? If they buy that oil, they are helping to swell the fortune of John D. Rockefeller. Is it any better to add to his gains than to help him to devote them to charitable uses? Is it any better to

take his money in the way of trade than in the way of benevolence? If Mr. Rockefeller should happen into one of their churches some Sunday, and should put a ten-dollar bill in the plate, would the minister insist that the deacons should return to him his contribution? There is no principle of general application which can be stated on which this demand of the Boston ministers can be maintained. And to single out an exceptional man for exceptional treatment is not the best method of bearing testimony against the wrong-doing which we wish to condemn.

Money obtained by fraud ought not to be received from a donor provided it can be returned to its legitimate owner; but this is because it does not really belong to the donor. Money obtained by fraud ought not to be received from a donor under circumstances which imply approval of his methods. For this reason it may well be affirmed that money ought not to be solicited by religious organizations from men whose method of acquisition is justly subject to general public condemnation. But the mere reception of money, whether in trade or for benevolence, does not carry with it any such implication. In the case under consideration, the gift from Mr. Rockefeller was not, we are informed, solicited by the American Board. It was given as the result of the personal wishes of a near relative of Mr. Rockefeller, a lady who in private life and as an active member of one of the leading Congre gational churches of the country has for many years been profoundly interested in Foreign Missions.

There are other and more effective ways in which the Church can express its condemnation of condemnable methods of money-getting. The Boston ministers might, by resolution, have long since put on record their disapproval of the methods of the Standard Oil Company in its early history, as The Outlook has done many times. The individual ministers might in their pulpits have condemned, as very likely many of them have done, all similar methods of acquisition, and, indeed, the very desire to get something for nothing out of which such methods spring. Every

minister can contribute to the public opinion which has demanded the Governmental investigation of the Standard Oil Company, and regulation by the Government of the great corporations so that rebates and similar injustice may be done away with. For it is upon public opinion that Governmental action in America depends, and the Church and the ministry are powerful factors in creating a vigorous and healthful public opinion. Every minister can do much, also, to raise the ethical ideals of business, so that methods which the business world approved or acquiesced in twenty-five years ago it may vigorously condemn to-day. If the Church and the ministry habitually, and with courage and vigor, condemn all questionable methods of money-getting, however and by whomsoever practiced, the effect of their testimony will not be vitiated by the refusal to attempt the impossible task of determining whether and to what degree money offered for benevolent work is tainted by the method in which it is believed to have been acquired. If, on the contrary, the Church and the ministry fail to bear such witness with the courage and the vigor which the conditions of the age demand, they cannot furnish a substitute for the neglected duty by the occasional refusal of money from a multi-millionaire because he has been indicted in specific terms for "methods which are morally iniquitous and socially destructive."

International Amenities

Political misunderstandings are of old growth. The greatest nations are not exempt from the charge of international ignorance. Down to the middle of the last century the Germans alone enjoyed the reputation of being more interested in the politics of other countries than in their own. It used to be said that the Augsburg "Allgemeine Zeitung" began its daily political review with South America and concluded it with Bavaria. France has perhaps remained longest in her political aloofness, in spite of the rude awakening from her dream of military supremacy in 1870;

but the mass of Germans, as well as Frenchmen, believe English self-sufficiency to this day to be proof against any vicissitude of fortune. Yet, while mutual misunderstandings among nations are always with us, there is apparent to-day a more sincere effort to remove them by appeals to reason than ever before. Sovereigns and ministers no longer hold the destinies of nations in the hollow of their hands. No ruler can to-day startle the world as did Napoleon III. on the first of January, 1859, when, turning at the New Year's reception abruptly to the Austrian Ambassador, Baron Hübner, he said: "I regret that my relations with your country are not as good as I might desire "—words that fell like a thunderbolt from a clear sky and presaged the coming war. Nor is it likely that any modern successor to Prince Bismarck will employ the rude methods of the Iron Chancellor, who for years kept ready at hand the means of provoking the two wars on which he had set his heart, those of 1866 and 1870.

Count von Bülow has, however, on more than one occasion shown his readiness to imitate his great predecessor in the gentler art of taking the foreign press into his confidence, in order to counteract momentary antagonisms between Germany and other countries. His much-talked-of interview with the English journalist, Mr. Bashford, as to AngloGerman relations, published in the December number of the "Nineteenth Century and After," bore the unmistakable imprint of sincerity, and has had the effect of evoking from leading German papers protestations of good will towards England, in the face of which the recent renewed bickerings of certain journals in London and Berlin appear pointless and puerile. Indeed, so well-informed and influential a German paper as the "Weser Zeitung" goes further than the Chancellor in disposing of the bugbear of a German naval policy aimed at preparing for a war with England. Count von Bülow had spoken of the futility of such a war on the ground of commercial rivalry, and had argued that the defeat of one of the two rivals would not result in the commercial supremacy of the other. "In former centuries," he said,

"England was always in a state of rivalry, with only one rival at a time with Spain, Holland, and France in turn. Everything was then at stake. But nowadays there are a number of Powers that make the same claims as we do, and the Russo-Japanese war shows that an addition may be made to their .number." The "Weser Zeitung "-and other leading German papers speak in a similar strain-frankly admits that England can at any time meet any effort on the part of Germany to increase her navy by building three times as many war-vessels. Count von Bülow had tried to allay British sensitiveness as to the language of such writers as the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, who in 1884 said, "The reckoning with England has still to come; it will be the longest and most difficult." The "Weser Zeitung" speaks of such phrases as "sounding brass," which a healthy nature merely laughs at. "Only melancholy Tasso grows morbid over Antonio's gibes."

Equally striking is the effort made by the eminent philosopher, Professor Friedrich Paulsen, in the December "Contemporary Review," to enlighten the British public as to the real sentiments of the German people towards England. He admits that the enthusiasm for English ways and institutions prevalent in Germany in the middle of the last century has largely died out, but he asserts most emphatically that neither among the leaders of thought nor among the masses of Germany is the view entertained that "Germany's way to greatness lies through the downfall of England. To millions of Germans the day that brought a war with England would be felt as the darkest day of their lives." Leaving moral considerations aside, Professor Paulsen speaks of the political necessity which draws the two countries together. England, he argues, needs the support of a great land power in order to retain her influence on Continental affairs, while Germany needs the support of England's sea power in order to develop her commerce. Germany is to him "a branch of the great Germanic Protestant community of nations to which, together with the Scandinavian peoples, the English and the North Amer

icans pre-eminently belong." While, on the whole, the English press has been less warmly responsive to such sentiments than the German, the tenor of the comments of the leading journals on the Chancellor's utterances has been conciliatory and sympathetic.

Even on the other side of the Channel temperate views begin to prevail where irritation might have been expected. Count von Bülow's allusion in a recent speech in the Reichstag to "the state of feeling beyond the Vosges," as manifest in the attacks of the Chauvinist press on Germany, has been ignored by the French Government and minimized by papers of the rank of the "Débats " and the "Temps." The ravings of the yellow journals of Paris about the renewed Prussian lust of conquest have excited as little public notice as the quixotic programme of the ridiculous "LatinSlavic League," which endeavors to weld all non-German elements (including Denmark and Holland) into an alliance directed not only against England, but even against the United States.

A similar conciliatory spirit has been at work in the liberal press of Germany and Austria with regard to the resumption of the negotiations for the new Austro-German commercial treaty, which had been broken off by the abrupt departure of the German Minister, Count Posadowsky, from Vienna, but are now satisfactorily concluded. It had been pointed out, in Berlin as well as in Vienna, that a tariff war would inevitably endanger the relations between Germany and Austria and threaten the stability of the Triple Alliance itself. Indeed, there has been noticeable of late in the government of the dual empire a disposition to look at internal problems from the larger point of view which takes in the effect of national questions on international obligations. Thus, there is no doubt that the resignation of the late Austrian Premier, Dr. Koerber, was due not only to the utter failure of his "policy of reconciliation " as between Germans and Slavs, but to the need of soothing Italian susceptibilities, sorely tried by the anti-Italian excesses at Innsbruck. The Austrian Government unquestionably heeded the

temperate counsel of such organs of public opinion in Italy as the "Nuova Antologia," which reminded the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Goluchowski, that the aspect of the Innsbruck riots was international as well as national, apart from the question of Irre dentism.

Thus, there are evident throughout Europe gratifying signs in unexpected quarters of the dawn of an era of greater international forbearance, although we are still far from that intellectual height which, in Goethe's opinion, justifies a cosmopolitan indifference to the narrower claims of patriotism.

Some Representative Novels

The manufacture of fiction goes on apace, and the volume of the output this season, as indicated by the publishers' lists, shows a rapid development of mechanical force and an unusual introduction of labor-saving devices. In this field, as in every other field of manufacture, invention is steadily increasing the volume of production. Less time is now involved in the turning out of a novel than at any earlier period, because so many mechanical devices have been introduced. The products of this industry are piled high on all the news-stands, are peddled through all the trains, and are distributed throughout the country with extraordinary thoroughness and skill. These wares are flamboyantly advertised, until, by mere iteration, the unwary reader is led to suppose that the goods are what they are represented to be. In many cases they are precisely what they are described to be; for the publisher does not claim that they are in any sense the real thing, that they have any art or solidity, or that they give any sign of life. He simply claims that they are absorbing, engrossing, enthralling, fascinating, and irresistible. For the most part, however, it must be confessed that they are insufferably dull, tedious, uninteresting, and often vulgar. The impress of the machine is on every chapter and the hand

of the vulgarian on every page; they bear no more relation to the real work of fiction than does a copy of a yellow journal to a real newspaper.

In this mass of machine-made novels there are a few every season that are hand-made; books which are not manufactured to sell, but which are the result of an inward impulse, embodying a real observation of life and registering a genuine artistic talent. Such books are for the refreshment of the soul, for education in the knowledge of life, for ministry to thought and to the sense of joy of which all the arts are the servants. Among the considerable group of stories of the current season which deserve the attention of the thoughtful reader may be enumerated three or four studies of temperament which are distinctively psychological, without over-emphasis of a method which has been greatly overworked of late years by a few accomplished writers who have subordinated the ends of fiction to its means and have put the psychological in place of the dramatic. A first place among these serious works of fiction must be given to Mrs. Ward's "The Marriage of William Ashe "(Harpers); one of those solid, thorough, able, and workmanlike novels in which Mrs. Ward has dealt with some of the most serious matters of experience and has proved her right to claim a first position among the novelists of the day. Among writers of fiction there is no artist of a higher mind or of more exacting ideal than this cultivated and painstaking woman; nor has she given the world. any better piece of fiction than this latest story, the central figure of which, as in the case of "Lady Rose's Daughter," is a semi-historical character. Perhaps Lady Kitty's personality is best indicated by saying that in a sense she had no character; she is the embodiment of temperament. Her life consists in a series of impressions, a succession of moods, following one another with almost inconceivable rapidity and each expressive of the woman's spirit at the moment. Fragile, elusive, morally irresponsible, this creature of moods, this victim of temperament, is described with the finest skill, the most delicate sympathy, and the surest moral insight. No one but an

artist could have made such a character convincing, and that is precisely what Mrs. Ward has done in this extraordinary study. William Ashe, on the other hand, is the embodiment of character. He does not lack temperament, passion, the power of throwing calculation to the winds, but he has English solidity and force. Of Cliffe, the villain of the story, so to speak, it must be said that he is a woman's bad man-a streak of genius embedded in a mass of cheap caddishness. He ought to have been either better or worse. The story needs condensation in the closing chapters, and suffers from lack of humor.

In an entirely different vein, but pervaded by the same seriousness of invention and stamped with the distinction of high-class workmanship, is Miss Sinclair's "The Divine Fire" (Holt); the study of a man of genius, born a cockney, growing up with the narrowest of associations, inheriting the most Philistine views of life, passing through a period of irregularity and vulgar associations without ever himself being vulgar, and finally throwing off his cockneyism under the inspiration and molding power of a great and noble passion of love; so that his character emerges at the end, through manifold experiences and much débris, as the statue comes from the hand of the sculptor slowly detached from a mass of inert matter. This story has great nobility of spirit; although somewhat too elaborate, it is a novel to be reckoned as one of the real things of the time.

The motif of "Constance Trescott " (The Century Company) is an extremely unpleasant one, and in hands less skillful than those of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell the story would be too painful. Taking as his background a Southern community at the close of the war, while memories were still fresh and bitter and the fires of passion still burning under the surface, Dr. Mitchell deals chiefly with three characters: a young Massachusetts lawyer, high-minded, clean-blooded, efficient, and attractive; a passionate, untrained, able man of a certain Southern type, brilliant but lawless; and a New England woman, capable of great self-devotion, but of a narrow temper, ardent, inflex

ible, jealous. The tragedy of an old struggle which lies behind these three people in the little Southern community culminates in a collision between the two men and the death of the husband; and then the motif of the story defines itself as the vengeance of the wife-cool, calculating, tireless, and in the end victorious. The story is a study of character of a very unusual kind, full of insight, experience, and skill. On the other hand, "The Opal" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), published anonymously, is the study of a brilliant girl of fascinating personality, who, like Lady Kitty, is a series of moods but has no depth of character and no real power of temperament. She is not a child of passion and tragedy as was Lady Kitty; her nature is like a mirror which reflects every light and shadow cast upon it; the victim, not of her temperament, but of the will of every person with whom she comes in contact. This book, from the pen of a new writer, shows genuine familiarity with the society which it describes, and is unusually witty and readable.

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In "Unleavened Bread " Judge Grant produced the most careful and vincing study of a certain superficially cultivated, emotionally thin, and fundamentally unscrupulous type of woman produced in this country by facilities for popular culture, the ease with which social conditions are changed, and the substitution of nerves for passion. In "The Orchid" (Scribners) Judge Grant has made another cabinet portrait of the same type of woman born further up in the social scale, lacking depth of nature, force of conviction, power of passion; with a certain hard finish sometimes mistaken for culture; an egoist at heart, unresponsive to moral claims, utterly indifferent to others, capable of selling her own child as part of her bargain to secure her release by divorce from the man whom she married for money. A more thoroughgoing study of feminine selfishness and lawlessness is not to be found in American fiction.

In striking contrast with these studies of modern types of thin, nervous femininity is the striking portrait of a woman of great gifts of imagination and passion