significance to the Russian Jews can be known. If it confers freedom of domicile, it will mean the removal of one of the most irritating and oppressive of the restrictions under which the Jews have lived in that country. Whatever may be the limitation of the ukase in this direction, it is a document of momentous importance in the history of the liberation of the Russian people.

The Naval Situation in the China Sea

The one thing that is certainly known as to naval events in the East last week is that the third Russian squadron, under Admiral Nebogatoff, passed through the Straits of Malacca, and is now somewhere in the China Sea-presumably hoping to effect a junction with Admiral Rojesvensky. This squadron consists for the most part of old and slow ships, but can throw a heavy broadside fire. It consists of one battle-ship (the Nicholas I.), three coastdefense armorclads, one cruiser, and several torpedo-boats, destroyers, and colliers. It is unknown as we write whether the main Russian fleet is awaiting this reinforcement near the French Indo-China coast, is moving south to meet it, or will sacrifice it and make a dash north toward Vladivostok. Opinion strengthens that Admiral Togo is not likely to attack the Russians until they move forward and pass through one of the straits which form part of all possible routes to Vladivostok. Meanwhile indignation in Japan against the aid given to Russian ships in French ports is increasing. New representations. to France have been made officially, and the Japanese press is speaking with much bitterness. It is asserted that since the Russian ships left Kamranh Bay other smaller French ports have been used freely, despite the orders sent by the French Government. The special correspondent of the New York "Sun" sent to his paper on April 30 a special despatch from Saigon which the French authorities refused to allow to pass, so that it reached this country only on May 8. This correspondent asserts that the French ships used Kamranh Bay as a naval base for ten days; that they there

received the fullest supplies of coal, water, cattle, and other provisions; that these stores had been brought to Saigon in immense quantities in advance, with the full knowledge of the French authorities; that the Russian ships could not possibly have been put in fighting condition without this assistance; that the Russian officers were allowed the freest use of French telegraphs, although press despatches were stopped; and that the French naval commander, Admiral de Jonquières, was fully aware that the laws of neutrality were, to say the least, stretched to the utmost. If this statement can be substantiated, and if the facts already reported as to the use of ports in Madagascar for many weeks are taken into consideration, Japan may well feel that she has a grievance against France, however impolitic it may be to push her complaints to the point of breaking off diplomatic relations. That the situation is regarded as serious in England, which is in friendly relations with both Japan and France, is shown by the following utterance of the London "Times" "In the interests of the peace of the world we earnestly trust that the Government and people of France do not remain under any illusion in regard to the great gravity of the situation which has arisen from the alleged conduct of the Baltic Fleet off the coast of IndoChina." The "Times" adds that the British people cannot affect to treat with indifference the assertions of the Japanese press, and that it is the duty of England to prevent the interference of third parties in the Russo-Japanese war.

The protracted debate the educational clauses of the bill establishing the Province of Alberta in the Canadian Northwest came to an end last week, and the second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of eighty-one votes, the largest majority ever recorded for a party measure in the Dominion Parliament. A vote was taken on an amendment offered by Mr. Borden, the leader of the Conservative Opposition, providing for the exclusive control of its educational policy by the new prov

The Canadian

Education Question upon

ince. This amendment was defeated, and the Government victory on the second reading assures the final passage of the bill, the remaining stages of its progress being comparatively unimportant. The Government members remained loyal, while thirteen Conservatives voted on the Government side. The result proves that the amendments offered by the Government, in which certain objectionable features of the bill as originally drawn were eliminated, were satisfactory to Sir Wilfrid Laurier's supporters, and it is no less certain that popular opinion in Canada has accepted them as the best that could be done under the circumstances. As we have already pointed out in our issue of April 15, the question of separate schools in the Canadian Northwest is radically different from that existing before Confederation in 1867, and it implies now no clerical domination in educational matters, the only suggestion of clerical influence being a half-hour's religious instruction after school hours, the character of that instruction being decided by the Protestant or Catholic majority in any school district. In all other respects the schools are alike and are completely controlled by the Dominion Government. Protestants, naturally, rely upon their large majority in the Northwest to prevent any Catholic preponderance in educational affairs. There is one aspect of the question, however, which has raised serious doubts, and that is the precedent which this measure affords for depriving future provinces in the Northwest of the right exclusively to direct their own educational policy. The wording of the Canadian Confederation Act on the control of education by the provinces was never clear, and has been variously interpreted; but the passage of this bill by the Dominion Parliament will seem definitely to establish the principle that all new provinces to be carved out of those vast regions will receive their educational direction from the federal authority at Ottawa. In other words, the centralizing tendency in public school affairs will be firmly grounded, and one of the most important subjects of legislation originally intended by the framers of Confederation to be under provincial control will be largely

and perhaps, indeed, almost or quite altogether transferred to federal control.

The Conference for

Probably nowhere Education in the South except in the South could there be found such a Conference as that which was held in Columbia, South Carolina, on April 26, 27, and 28. Elsewhere in the United States an educational gathering is valuable chiefly as a means by which expert opinion concerning education may be expressed. The Conference for Education in the South, on the other hand, is almost distinctive in being a medium for the expression of the educational faith of the people. It is true that the Conference is attended by educational leaders, but they are leaders primarily by virtue of their power to create and maintain popular enthusiasm for education. The Conference is composed mainly of Southerners; it is, as it of course ought to be, dominated by Southerners. Its importance, however, is so manifestly National that it has drawn to its meetings not a few from the North. As its personnel is not sectional, so its object is not merely scholastic. The conception of education which it embodies is as broad as it is untechnical. Nothing which makes for higher intelligence and better mutual understanding, whether between individuals, or between classes, or between races, or between sections, is alien to its programme. Its sessions at Columbia were in keeping with the character it had established at other places. There was special fitness in the place of meeting, for in South Carolina was established, as Governor Heyward said in his address of welcome, the first library to be supported in any degree by public money, and in Columbia is South Carolina College, the oldest of the State universities, a hundred years old this year. The meetings could have been held under no surroundings of more enticing charms. The new, rich foliage of a Southern springtime shaded street, garden, and campus. Roses in full bloom and blossoms of many kinds gave color to the scene and fragrance to the air. Hospitality, void of device, rich with sincerity, made the visitors from

other towns and States, South and North, members of the households of their hosts. There were no strangers at the Conference in Columbia; there were many friends from a distance. Not once was the spirit of kindliness and confidence troubled throughout the Conference. This fact is not without significance, because there were gathered in that place people of differing opinions which were born of differing traditions. As President Denny, of Washington and Lee University, said in his "Southern Interpretation of the Conference," there was almost nothing unrepresented in the Conference "except provincial narrowness, petty animosity, selfish motive, and ignoble purpose." The spirit of the Conference was the natural result of the willingness which every one present had to hear and understand other views than his own. An exception to this spirit was to be found only outside of Columbia, in the utterances of a single newspaper. As Dr. St. Clair McKelway said, with a gravity that drew a laugh from his hearers, "The sentiment for this cause falls just so little short of unanimity as to destroy the idea of suspicious collusion."

The Addresses

In his speech warmly advocating the sort of education that will make for public order, Colonel Gordon, who, as head of the Georgia militia, managed admirably the complicated situation occasioned by the notorious Statesboro lynching, deplored the fact (which is true of Southern affairs as it is true, for instance, of college life) that abnormal deeds and thoughtless opinions are given wider currency in the newspapers than that which is normal and thoughtful. Not the least virtue of this Conference is that it serves as an expression of the normal life and thoughtful public opinion of the South. There was no address, therefore, without significance; for even the speeches made by Northerners acquired significance from the reception given them by the audience. Among the speakers the men who are bearing the burdens of practical educational effort in the South spoke with special buoyancy. They were all men. who, though proud of the past, lived in

the future. During the session no more courageous speech was made than that of Mr. W. H. Hand, Superintendent of Schools in Chester, South Carolina. He did not hesitate to show that the isolation of the South in the matter of compulsory education was far from salutary. He made skillful use of statistics to show how deadly to illiteracy compulsory education laws are. His summons to the South to establish compulsory education was strongly applauded, and when Governor Heyward bade the visitors farewell, in a speech of genuine feeling, he took occasion to announce his desire that the Legislature might give him the opportunity of signing a compulsory education bill. The Hon. Seth Low, in reviewing the educational progress of New York City, gave some interesting facts which had a close bearing upon Southern conditions. For instance, he recalled the fact that the first free school, not ecclesiastical, established on Manhattan Island was for negroes; and that for a hundred years New York maintained separate schools for the blacks and whites. The climax of the Conference was capped by a number of remarkable impromptu speeches which held the large audience until near midnight. In one of these, Professor S. C. Mitchell, of Richmond, Virginia, gave an admirable résumé of the Conference. The three present problems of the South, he said, were industrial development, National integration, and racial adjustment. These are to be worked out in the schools. To this end the Conference helps to supply money-indirectly— suggestion, and effort; but, what is of more importance still, it offers the ministry of spirit. No one could attend this Conference without recognizing this as a true characterization, without being convinced that, as in matters pertaining to the churches, so in matters pertaining to the schools, the motive power is a spiritual life. In deference to the judgment of others, Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York, consented to accept re-election as President of the Conference. All the other officers, including the members of the Executive Committee, are Southern men. The Vice-President is ex-Governor Aycock, of North Carolina.

Accident

As in other years, Mr. Ogden, The Railway with characteristic generosity, brought on a special train with him to the Conference a number of guests from the North and the South. He had arranged an itinerary which included, besides the Conference at Columbia, several centers of educationGreenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina, Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina, and Hampton, Virginia. As the special train was entering Greenville the passengers in the sleeping-cars were roused by a rough jolting, and then a sudden jar as the train came to a stop. As many as were free to do so alighted, to find the forward carsamong them the two dining-cars-piled up in an almost unrecognizable mass. A few had risen early and had gone forward to breakfast. How any of these escaped with their lives is a marvel. The fact is that out of that fearful débris, which almost immediately was in flames, crawled some half-dozen passengersmen and women-bruised, cut, and burned, besides several colored cooks and waiters. Two waiters and a cook, however, were pinned down in the wreck and were killed. A flagman also, who had been on the locomotive, was so badly injured that he died soon after being taken from the wreck. Those who were injured included Professor Farnam, of Yale, and Mrs. Farnam; Dr. St. Clair McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn "Eagle:" Dr. Julius Dreher, formerly President of Roanoke College; Mrs. J. G. Thorp, daughter of the poet Longfellow; Mr. R. M. Ogden, secretary to Mr. Robert C. Ogden. Had the whole party been at breakfast, as might well have happened if most of them had not been up until very late the night before, a great many lives, some recognized all over the Nation as of inestimable worth, would have been lost. The accident was of the sort that happens with grim frequency in the United States.

Two

trains going in opposite directions, one at the rate of forty-five miles an hour, crashed into one another. Apparently there was some lapse of memory or carelessness in the transfer of a despatch. A freight train, whose conductor supposed the special had gone by, was

moving on the main track. Whether the engineer in charge of the special train was familiar with the route or not, and whether, as was stated at the time, he was a freight engineer without experience in running such a train as this, are questions to be settled by the proper authorities. The Southern Railway, on which this accident happened, has already a notoriety in the matter of casualties, which this occurrence will not lessen. The fact that railroad officials are willing thus to take chances in such matters does not allay the increasing popular demand for government control and even ownership of railroads. The citizens of Greenville offered relief with the same largeness of generosity with which they had planned their welcome. The itinerary of the party was changed, but the trip was not abandoned. It was a sign of the earnestness with which all on the train had undertaken to learn what the South had to teach that, with the exception of those most seriously injured, they continued on their way to Hampton.

Hampton Institute

Anniversary

On Tuesday and Wednesday following the Conference in Columbia the exercises of Virginia Day and Anniversary Day were held at Hampton Institute. On Virginia Day people of high standing from the State were present on the platform and in the audience. Indeed, every element of influence among Virginians was well represented, with one exception-the smaller politicians. Judges, bankers, merchants, women of social influence and moral leadership, educators, thus gathered together, proved as nothing else could how positively the culture and best energy of the Commonwealth are enlisted in behalf of negro education. President Boatwright, of Richmond College, offered the greetings of his institution, declaring that there was common ground on which Richmond College and Hampton Institute stood. President Blackwell, of Randolph-Macon College, affirmed his belief in Hampton Institute because of his belief in democracy. On Anniversary Day thirty-six candidates for academic diplomas and forty-five for trade certificates in a dozen

industrial occupations were presented to the President of the Trustees, Mr. Robert C. Ogden. As on the preceding day, several of the candidates spoke on some aspect of their education. On both days, also, Dr. Booker T. Washington, the most renowned alumnus of the school, was called upon to speak. Never did he speak with more boldness, judgment, humor, and effectiveness. On Anniversary Day especially his speech was replete with epigrammatic sentences that might well be addressed to every race, though he applied them to his own people: "It is well to seek privileges, but it is better to seek to be worthy of privilege. . . . Emphasize your opportunities there are plenty of people who will emphasize your disadvantages.. No man can degrade you; others can inconvenience you, but none but yourselves can degrade yourselves. . . . Make yourselves indispensable. . He pointed his hearers to the success of Japan, and added the good-natured thrust-" And now they say the Japanese are members of the white race!" "I very much wish," said he, in commenting on the friendliness of General Fitzhugh Lee for the colored people, "that we could go back to the old days in the South, when the best white men and women taught negro Sunday-schools." In celebration of Dr. H. B. Frissell's twenty-fifth anniversary as a teacher and later principal of the school, Dr. Washington presented to him, on behalf of graduates and former students, eight hundred dollars in gold, "every atom of which," said Dr. Washington, 'represents the heart-throbs of hundreds of men and women whom you have helped and inspired." With this gift was joined another of five hundred dollars from an unknown donor, and the wish was expressed that the whole sum might be used to defray the expense of a needed vacation. Mr. John Graham Brooks gave the results of a special study he had made in a country region of Virginia which showed how the Hampton idea had helped negroes to secure an economic foothold on the earth. There is no institution in the United States from which schools, colleges, and universities, North and South, for white and for

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the installation of Dr. Brown Ayres as the President of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville on April 25 have, for distinct reasons, an extraordinary interest, as evidence and result of the vital movement for education which is sweeping over the Southern States. It was not an occasion so brilliant or historically picturesque as the inauguration of Dr. Alderman at the University of Virginia, but it served to emphasize no less specifically the modern ideals of education, of culture in the broadest sense, linked with the idea of service, which the South has long ago learned, as a part of her emancipation, to realize and exemplify, and which point to the early rehabilitation of the whole economic and industrial life of the Southern people. The Tennessee University received a substantial impetus of growth through the executive energy of Dr. Charles W. Dabney, who was called to the presidency of the University of Cincinnati, and the University was fortunate in securing the services of an educator so thoroughly equipped as the new President, who enters upon his duties with every prospect of success. Many notable addresses were heard-from Professor James, of Johns Hopkins, from President McLean, of the University of Iowa, from Chancellor Kirkland, of Vanderbilt University, from Chancellor Fulton, of the University of Mississippi, from Dr. Dabney, and others; but the inaugural address of Dr. Ayres himself struck the keynote of the new idea, the new method in education; rather, it endeavored to fuse all the diverse elements, to harmonize the pure idealism of the classic curriculum with the insistent demands of a so-called materialism, and to show how vitally the University is related to the life of the people and repre