gust of all such things as piracies and robberies, and made it clear that 'for the kind of men called buccaneers he always had and still has hatred.' But, instead of the £10,000 damages which he claimed, the Court had the hardihood to award only £210 and 20s. costs. It was truly little encouragement for reformed pirates that they were likely to be grossly misunderstood.

But we can leave further reflections on the moral lessons of the life of Henry Morgan to those better qualified to sit in judgment by virtue of their detailed study of a remarkable career. There is, for example, Mr. Frank Cundall, secretary of the Jamaica Institute, whose original researches into the remoter stages of Jamaican history during the past thirty years have made everyone interested in the West Indies his debtor.

From Morgan's rough tomb on the Palisados our gaze will sweep once more out to the sea. To the southward, for two hundred leagues, stretches the restless Caribbean, as inscrutable now as in the days when the Elizabethan sea-rovers found its attraction so irresistible and so fatal. Many English bones have rotted in the fever-stricken lands upon its surf-bound borders. Drake and Hawkins sacrificed themselves to its spell and made it their grave.

Into the narrow channel giving access to the harbor down below sailed the brave Benbow, after his wonderful combat at odds of five to one with Du Casse's squadron. His leg shot away by chain shot, Benbow continued to direct the battle from his cradle on the quarter-deck, and would have won a crushing victory but for the desertion of more than one of his commanders.

He came into Kingston to put them upon their trial, but he came also to die. Before the two ringleaders suffered the fate of cowards in Plymouth Sound, Benbow, his health at its lowest ebb through physical and mental suffering, had sickened and died, and had been duly laid to rest in Kingston Church, where his tomb may still be

seen.

Into Kingston Harbor eighty years later came in triumph the great Rodney, after his portentous victory over De Grasse at the Battle of the Saints, lacking which it is difficult to see how Jamaica could have preserved intact her proud record of inviolability from foreign invasion since the British occupation in 1655.

Passing overland from Hardware Gap, which is the viewpoint in the mountains from which we have surveyed the past, our eyes will light upon a vast plain to the westward, backed by the hills which run through the centre of the island. The plain has every possible shade of tropical vegetation to give it color, and it is transected by a narrow white strip, which from its extreme straightness at this distance we know to be the road to Spanish Town. The old capital of the island, founded by no less a personage than Diego Colon, son of the discoverer of the New World, Santiago de la Vega, as it then was, merits, even at this date, when much of its glory has departed, more detailed inspection than we can give it at a distance of twenty miles. We will not linger upon it at the moment, therefore, but, with a last look of admiration at the incomparable mountain scenery to the south, prepare to resume our journey to the opposite shores of the island.

AMONG the races that are related to Hungarians the Finnish-Ugrian peoples are the most closely connected so far as speech is concerned. It is natural that this little family of nations should play no great part in history; they have endured hardships and a terrible subjection for too many years at the hands of the foreign nations who have ruled them. Nevertheless these little peoples, with the characteristic tenacity of their race, have resisted each new imposition and would perish rather than bow their necks to the yoke. Among the approximately ten million souls of these various related peoples, two groups are especially important for their numbers and their natural culture the Finns and the Esthonians. As a result of the World War both of these attained their freedom.

There is a great difference in the past histories of the two peoples. The Finnish nation, which includes three million souls, has never been a subject nation of serfs. No serfdom was allowed in their country, and the Finnish peasants led a comparatively free life during the seven hundred years of subjection to a foreign overlordship. Quite otherwise was the fate of the Esthonian people, who are closely related to the Finns. For seven hundred long years the most terrible despotism tested their endurance, and the fact that to-day they number no more than 1,200,000 may be ascribed to this.

The Esthonians settled in what is to-day their fatherland in the sixth

century. Their principal occupation was fighting by land and sea and they achieved a reputation that struck terror to the hearts of the other Baltic peoples. This gallant race was first conquered by the Danes in 1219. The Danes, however, could not suppress the insurrections that broke out one after another, and sold the province in the year 1346 to the Teutonic Knights. The Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, broke the power of this order in the year 1621. He favored Protestantism in this province and laid the foundation of the nation's culture. The enlightened Swedish rule was destroyed by the Russians when Peter the Great attached the Esthonian territory to his own empire a hundred years later.

The real masters, in spite of the change of governments, however, continued to be the descendants of the Teutonic Knights, the German nobles who took advantage of the shifting administrations to make good their hold over the Esthonian people and to subdue relentlessly. The resentment of the people was shown in numerous revolts, but each time the rising was put down. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the system of serfdom was abandoned, but only on paper, and the whole subject population dragged out a life of downright slavery. The subjection was nowhere so terrible as here, where the landowner stood in the relation of a foreigner to his serf.

After the Russo-Japanese War and its unfortunate outcome for Russia, the

whole empire was seized with revolutionary fever and the Esthonian people likewise rose in revolt, only to be suppressed with a pitiless terror. In the World War the Esthonians shed their blood for the Tsar with honest loyalty, and when in 1917 the great Russian Revolution broke out, and the Tsaristic régime was destroyed, the Bolshevist Government replaced it. In the autumn of 1917 the Bolsheviki surged into Esthonia only to be driven out again after three months' rule by the combined Finnish, Esthonian, and German troops.

On February 24, 1918, the Esthonians proclaimed the independence of their country; but it was still a long way to complete victory, for on the very next day began the German occupation that threatened with eventual annihilation the freedom that they had barely won. The Peace of BrestLitovsk, in January 1918, compelled the Germans to withdraw, but the Esthonian troops fought with the Bolsheviki for two years thereafter until finally the Peace of Dorpat established the independence of Esthonia in 1920. Thus did the Esthonian brothers of us Hungarians attain the fulfillment of the dream of complete independence that they had dreamed for centuries. Esthonia - which is half as large as our own mutilated fatherland became a democratic republic and is directing its own destiny and working out its own future.

The unexpected liberation of Esthonia found the people developed and conscious of their nationality. The Esthonian nation belonged to the one nationality of Russia that had made the greatest cultural strides. Most of the people can read and write and most of them keep step with modern civilization. Their national consciousness was greatly strengthened in 1861 by the appearance of a naïve epic

called the Son of Kalev - a Hungarian translation of which has been ready and waiting publication for many years. Under the stimulating influence of this work a whole series of writers and poets sprang up. Like the Finns, the Esthonians attracted the attention of Europe with their folk poetry. This little people were the first to gather their popular traditions together in one collection, and Esthonia is the only country whose folk traditions have been collected with the precision of a legal document. In this Pastor Jakob Hurt and Dr. Okar Kallas, the husband of the writer, Aino Kallas, deserve the greatest credit.

Frau Aino Kallas has made a beautiful contribution to Esthonian and Finnish literature. Her work is like a gold bridge joining the spiritual lives of one people to that of another. She comes from a family almost all of whose members possess literary ability. Her father was Julius Krohn, the noted scholar and poet; her older brother, Karl Krohn, is a professor at Helsingfors University and founder and president of a Folklore Society that extends its activities even into our own Hungary.

The striking character of Aino Kallas's literary activity is that she is never untrue to her own womanhood. In her writings she maintains a feminine mildness, warmth, and straightforwardness; she is a master of style. From every line of her work an inner meaning springs with a lyric touch that is especially evident, with its living warmth of feeling, in descriptions. She also knows how to attain a bold presentment of her subjects and how to draw her characters, into whose souls she plumbs deeply, true to life. She does not write a great deal, but whatever comes from her pen is, without any exception, in good taste, carefully thought out, and of excellent quality.

Her work all of which, except for one novel, treats of the Esthonian people appears for the most part in Esthonian or Finnish, or in Danish, German, and English translations. It is to be hoped that a selection from her stories will appear in the Hungarian language. At the evening reading that the distinguished authoress gave in the Assembly Room of the Hungarian Academy of Science, she read two stories in German, both of which treat of actual events. In 'The White Ship of Lassenberg' she treats the mystic feeling of an Esthonian religious sect

for their peasant prophet, who announces the coming of a white ship on which the true believers are to be borne away to a better land of freedom and well-being. Languishing in their sorrow, the serfs trust their leader with blind fanaticism; but the false prophet suddenly leaves his followers in the lurch and flees with one of his close companions to the Crimea. The descendants of these very people, however, are wandering to-day in the land of their dreams, in their promised land that is to say, in a free and independent Esthonia.

CHARLES LAMB wrote a series of essays upon popular fallacies. I do not, at the moment, carry them very clearly in my memory; but, unless that treacherous servant misleads me more even than she usually does, he did not write of one piece of proverbial so-called wisdom that has always seemed to me to be peculiarly pernicious. And this saw, this scrap of specious advice, this untruth masquerading as logic, is one that I remember to have had hurled at my head at frequent intervals from my earliest youth right up to my present advanced age. How many times have I not been told that 'If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well'?

Never was there a more untruthful word spoken in earnest. For the world is full of things that are worth doing, but certainly not worth doing well.

Was it not so great a sage as Herbert Spencer who said to the young man who had just beaten him at billiards, 'Moderate skill, sir, is the sign of a good eye and a steady hand, but skill such as yours argues a youth misspent'? Is any game worth playing supremely well, at the price of constant practice and application?

Against the professional player I say nothing; he is a public entertainer, like any other, and by his skill in his particular sport he at least fulfills the first social duty of man- that of supporting himself and his family by his own legitimate exertions. But what is to be said of the crack amateur? To me he seems one of the most contemptible of mankind. He earns no money, but devotes himself, for the mere selfish pleasure of the thing, to some game,

It is true that he has provided entertainment for a certain number of persons, but he has never had the pluck to submit himself to the test by which we demand that every entertainer should justify his choice of a calling - the demonstration of the fact that the public is willing to pay him for his entertainment. And, when his day is over, what is left, not even to the world, but to himself? Nothing but a name that is at once forgotten, or is remembered by stout gentlemen in clubs.

The playing of games, certainly, is a thing which is not worth doing well.

But that does not prove that it is not worth doing at all, as the proverb would, by implication, persuade us. There is nothing more agreeable and salutary than playing a game which one likes, and the circumstance of doing it badly interferes with the pleasure of no real devotee of any pastime. The man who minds whether or not he wins is no true sportsman - which observation is trite, but the rule it implies is seldom observed, and comparatively few people really play games for the sheer enjoyment of the playing. Is this not proved by the prevalence and popularity of handicaps? Why should we expect to be given points unless it be that we wish to win by means other than our own skill?

'Ah! but,' my reader may say, 'the weaker player wants to receive points in order that he may give the stronger one a better game.' Really, I do not believe that that is so. Possibly, sometimes, a strong and vainglorious

player may wish to give points, in order that his victory may be the more notable. But I do not think that even this is the true explanation. That, I suspect, was given to me the other day by the secretary of a lawn-tennis tournament, in which I played. 'Why all this nonsense of handicaps? Why not let us be squarely beaten, and done with it?' I asked him. 'Because,' he replied, 'if we did not give handicaps, none of the less good players would enter.' Is that not a confession that the majority of us have not realized the true value of doing a trivial thing badly, for its own sake, and must needs have our minds buoyed and cheated into a false sense of excellence?

Moreover it is not only such intrinsically trivial things as games that are worth doing badly. This is a truth which, oddly enough, we accept freely of some things- but not of others and as a thing which we are quite content to do ill let me instance acting. Acting, at its best, can be a great art, a thing worth doing supremely well, though its worth, like that of all interpretative arts, is lessened by its evanescence. For it works in the impermanent medium of human flesh and blood, and the thing that the actor creates — for what we call an interpretative artist is really a creative artist working in a perishable medium — is an impression upon, an emotion or a thought aroused in, the minds of an audience, and is incapable of record.

Acting, then, let me postulate, though I have only sketched ever so briefly the proof of my belief, — can be a great art. But is anyone ever deterred from taking part in amateur theatricals by the consideration that he cannot act well? Not a bit of it! And quite rightly not, for acting is one of the things about which I am writing this essay the things that are worth doing badly. Another such thing is music; but