members are trained for the efficient perform ance of the duties of the modern line officer. The midshipman will be grounded in all these duties at Annapolis, and will be perfected likewise in all of them by actual work after graduation. We are not making a revolution; we are merely recognizing and giving shape to an evo. respect and imperial position, she must be prepared to face heavy sacrifices when necessary, or this influence will decay." GENERAL VON GOLTZ ON THE BOER WAR. lution which has come slowly but surely and THE European reviews continue to discuss naturally, and we propose to reorganize the navy along the lines indicated by the course of the evolution itself." A THE SEA THE ONLY BATTLEFIELD. HITHERTO unsuspected corollary of M. Bloch's doctrine, that the improvement of weapons will render land war on a great scale practically impossible, is dwelt upon by Commander G. A. Ballard, R. N., in the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution for August. Every campaign, excepting those which are waged by overwhelming numbers against a comparatively few resolute combatants, will result in stalemate. Granting that this is so, says Commander Ballard, what follows? All future wars will be fought out at sea. Military men have brought their art or profession to such a pitch of perfec tion that, given forces of comparative equality, it is impossible to do more than bring matters to a deadlock. Therefore the deciding battles of the future will be fought out on the sea, where it is only too easy to fight to a finish. Commander Ballard thus summarizes his own conclusions: Sec In Firstly, if his ideas prove to be wholly correct, and hostile operations between equally matched armies reach at length a condition of deadlock, the influence of sea power as an alternative force in the mutual relations of states will become not only greater, but paramount. ondly, if his ideas are only correct in a modified form, the reluctance to face the sufferings of land attack, even when it has prospects of ultimate success, will still heighten the advantages to be derived from resort to the alternative, although in a correspondingly modified form. either case the results will be beneficial to Great Britain so long as she maintains her maritime strength unimpaired; and, paradoxical though it may seem, if M. de Bloch were even approximately correct in his views, her influence on European politics, although not herself a great military power, will be enhanced rather than diminished by scientific improvements in military weapons. But if his views are correct, the tendency of the future will be toward the development of the sea power of other countries as well; and if England is to maintain her self the military lessons of the Boer War. The Deutsche Revue for August opens with an article on this topic by General von Goltz, the famous soldier who reorganized the Turkish army, and who is looked upon as one of the greatest military authorities in Germany. LESSONS FOR GERMANY. The general discusses the war solely from the point of view of its teaching value for the German army. He, however, points out that there is much more to be learned from it than tactics and strategy. When a small nation of farmers and shepherds-numbering less than the inhabitants of Munich or Cologne-wages war for almost three years against the first world power, and forces it to put forth the greatest efforts, the matter deserves attention. The nature of the seat of war explains a good deal, but not all. The difficulties of transport, etc., should not be overlooked, but, after all, the area was not large enough to be the sole cause why such a huge army was needed. How can the reported astonishing shooting of the Boers be the cause? An experienced European officer who went through the war told the general that the average shooting was no higher than in the German army. The tradition has also been long ago destroyed that the Boers met every danger fearlessly. Robust health and a good eye had a good deal to do with success. It is also wrong to seek the explanation in the abnormal unskillfulness of the English troops. While the strategy of the campaign is open to much criticism, the earlier leaders were almost obliged to divide their forces in order to save Ladysmith and Kimberley. As regards the be havior of the English troops, the above-mentioned officer said that they behaved, when attacking, just as did the Germans at manœuvres. THE ARTILLERY. The first fact which was noticeable is the comparative uselessness of the immense superiority of the English in artillery. This point is even more important than the infantry fights. The German field artillery has been greatly strengthened recently, and in consequence the matter has a double interest. The Napoleonic lesson was that artillery should be massed. The Boer War teaches the contrary. The numerically inferior guns of the Boers again and again checked the British artillery attack, and the preparation for an infantry attack by concentrated artillery fire proved futile. The explanation is that with modern weapons the danger lies in having the guns too close together, and the lesson is that, unless there is a great deal of room, it is useless to increase the number of guns. An officer who fought at Beaugency-where the cannonade was particularly fierce said that the noise of the guns at Colenso preceding the infantry attack made the row he heard in 1870 sink into insignificance. Every one thought that the Boers were annihilated, as the dust made by the bursting shells entirely covered the spot where they were. As a matter of fact, hardly any damage was done at all. "The only question is," said he, "if the nerves of German soldiers could stand the strain when such a rain of fire was descending on them. I rather doubt it; but the Boers, it is well known, have no nerves!" THE INFANTRY. The war has repeated the lesson that a defending army has all the advantage in a frontal attack, and that a bold defender in a good position can hold out against tremendous odds. The same lesson may be learned for infantry as for artillery, namely, that the old massing methods must be abandoned. At last it has been clearly demonstrated that, with modern weapons, it is impossible to attack without cover. None of these points are new; they were only emphasized. MOUNTED INFANTRY. The ⚫use of mounted infantry was, however, quite new. The resistance which small mobile parties can offer to a huge orderly army, which overruns the land and occupies the towns, deserves close attention. Such a possibility could, however, hardly occur in Europe, as the necessary conditions are absent,-namely, huge space, sparsely populated country, natural hiding places, and an immobile enemy. Another point to be noted is that huge numbers are not so necessary in war as is at present considered to be the case. He points out that in the Franco-German War the war madness" was even more dangerous than the foe to the Germans. It is on such occasions that men like Botha, De Wet, Delarey, and Beyers come to the front. FAILURE AND SUCCESS. The Boers failed, and one of the chief reasons he assigns is that they defended only, never attacked. Their object was to retain what they had, their opponents' object was to take their country. We learn, says General von Goltz, with much greater pleasure from the Boers, but we must not overlook the lessons of the English. Why did they win? Because when they go in for a thing they stick to it, no matter how much it costs them, An Englishman wrote him, on the outbreak of the war: "Africa is necessary for our future, and we cannot allow an enemy to be at the back of our colonies there. If, therefore, 100,000 men are not sufficient to overthrow the republic, we will send 200,000; and if 200,000 are not enough, we will send 300,000." THE CAUSE OF THE WAR. 66 Leading English statesmen were of the same opinion, and took the right moment to begin. The American-Spanish war had been used by them very cleverly in order to get into good re.lations with their American cousins, so that they should not disturb things. The shrinking from war of the Continent, where the great powers kept the balance even by mutual mistrust, was plain to their eyes. The Eastern troubles of the last few years had proved how great powers, even when apparently united, can, nevertheless, paralyze one another. Russia, who could have vetoed the war the soonest of all, was not to be feared because of her, peace-loving monarch. Such a moment was not likely to occur again for another hundred years, and Chamberlain and his colleagues were not only quick to see it, but resolved to use it regardless of consequences. That was, perhaps, morally not very beautiful, in any case not very magnanimously managed, but it was logical statesmanship." TOLSTOY THROUGH FRENCH EYES. "TH. BENTZON" (Madame Blanc) con tributes to the Revue des Deux Mondes a Charming paper on Tolstoy, with whom she spent a day during a recent visit to Russia. She describes with what eagerness she went forward to meet the great man who, tall and vigorous, advanced to meet us; far more remarkable in appearance than any of his portraits would lead one to suppose, for no painter has been able to present adequately the leonine structure of the head, the quaint, powerful aspect of the flowing beard, the rough-hewn features gathered together under the broad forehead of the great imaginative thinker. . . . In the smile there is much kindness, and the homely blouse of the peasant cannot conceal the manners of the grand seigneur." She also gives a rapid word-picture of Countess Tolstoy : "One cannot help seeing that here is a woman of the world, affable, gifted with good sense, still youthful (she is twenty-five years younger than her husband), and while quite able to hold her own with the great man, holding loyally to his side in the moment of peril. The whole woman is summed up in a phrase once attributed to her: When I first married Count Tolstoy I was very simple in my habits, and I always traveled second class; but as his wife he compelled me to go first. Now he expects me to travel third; I myself prefer my old mode of going second class!' 999 LITERARY JUDGMENTS. Tolstoy discussed with Madame Bentzon the literature of France. He spoke with bitter irony of the more extravagant symbolistic and naturalistic writers of the present day, but expressed THE INFLUENCE OF DANTE ON ART. great admiration of the philosophical authors of ONE of the most interesting of the articles in number of the Art Journal is a discussion of the influence which Dante exercised on the art of his century. Mr. Addison McLeod writes: the nineteenth century, notably of Rousseau. Of comparatively modern French writers he prefers. Balzac; and though full of enthusiasm concerning Maupassant, deplores his choice of subjects, considering that the feminine element influences far too much the modern French novelists. He spoke with respect and liking of the thoughtful and sincere work of Edouard Rod, and also of that of the brothers Margueritte. Tolstoy's favorite novelist is Charles Dickens. With him he feels in complete sympathy, for Dickens always took the side of the poor, the humble, and the unfortunate. He reserved all his anger and contempt for Kipling, to whom he even denied talent; but then it must be remembered that Tolstoy has an intense horror of warfare, and this although or, perhaps, because-he himself took part as a combatant in the Crimean War. RELIGIOUS VIEWS. During the course of this interesting interview Tolstoy spoke at great length of religion. He is horrified to think that in France the school children are in future to be taught nothing concerning God. He is an ardent Christian, or rather an ardent Gospeller; the four Gospels alone, he says, should suffice for the conduct of life. Countess Tolstoy listens to her husband's religious views in silence; she has remained, in spite of her fine letter apropos of the excommunication of Tolstoy, sincerely Greek Orthodox, and she refused to copy, when acting as her husband's secretary, a passage in "Resurrection, dealing with the Mass, of which she disapproved. ing. At the present time he is engaged in edit. ing his diary, and he is also writing a " Mani. festo on Liberty of Conscience." He spoke with indulgent kindness of those who persecuted him, but his wife, with indignation, read their French visitor a letter from the local pope, or priest, imploring her to insure Tolstoy's conversion before death supervened! In the neighborhood of whatever place they happen to be staying all the popes preach against Tolstoy and his works, and the Archbishop of Simferopol, in the course of a sermon delivered in his cathedral, declared him to be anti-Christ! PETTY PERSECUTIONS. Concerning Tolstoy's future plans, he informed Madame Bentzon that he intended to write a sequel to Resurrection," but that before he did so he had much to write, Enough to take up my time for the next forty years," he said, smil To all who know anything of Tuscan art, the names of Cimabue, Giotto, Orcagna, are household words. Yet the ideas connected with them are apt to be merely scattered and vague, or else the over-emphasized perceptions of some strong mind which has made one of them its especial study. Let it be allowed us to particu larize in a general way. "Cimabue was a painter of purely religious pieces, with no attempt at naturalism, but a very definite seeking after beauty. Giotto was both much wider in scope and intensely realistic in aim striving by all his powers-imperfect though they were-to paint life as it is. His symbolism, when it comes, is plain and direct, usually expressed in single figures. Next after him comes Simone Memmi. He has made no advance as a craftsman, and has only become more introspective and thoughtful. Then comes the period with which we propose to deal. THE WORK OF ORCAGNA. "There is a spirit very clearly visible to the visitor in Florence, and though he may connect it with no very definite time, he does with one name, viz., that of Orcagna. It is a spirit, suggestive but unmistakable; betrayed rather by change of mood than change of subject, though it has to a large extent introduced, instead of the painting of life actual, the symbolical treatment of all that connects it with things beyond. Even subjects of a more ordinary kind, however, are given a mystic turn. We notice strange beasts about the fringes of the picture, stray uncouth demons intruding here and there, giving us the feeling that there are gentlemen of their kind in abundance lurking outside. What is the cause of this new and hardly wholesome atmosphere? Where are we to realize it? Whence are we to trace it? As an artistic influence, how admirable is it?" WHERE ART HAS FAILED. These are the questions investigated in the article. Mr. McLeod says in conclusion : .6 Lastly, why is it that art may never be by intention ugly? Ought she not to try and influence moral ideas, and must she not use all means needful for this? "I think all her acts must be ordered with reference to one great end, which is to inflame our spirits by the presentment of what is noble or beautiful. To lead us on by pointing to the heights above, not to the gulfs behind; to encourage us with the waving banner of hope, not flog us with our iniquities; by showing us the best, to inspire us to become the best. It is at once her limitation and her glory. We do not seek out physical ugliness in life; we tolerate it if need be, but we do not seek to perpetuate it, to people the isle with Calibans. Dante himself was not a happy man, and I sometimes wonder whether the world is happier for all he has written. But this is not the point. Perhaps the world ought not to be happier for him; but it ought to be happier for its pictures; and it is because of this that men like the Orcagnas have failed. "It is because of this that modern art has failed, too. In aspiring to teach, she has forgotten how to praise. Her eye has fallen from the star of beauty that used to lead her, and her feet are floundering in muddy ways." เ WHAT IS ELECTRICITY? MR. R. CARL SNYDER gives an interesting account of the discussions concerning the nature of electricity in the October Harper's. It is one of the marvels of modern science that it is so impossible to decide definitely what is the nature of the force which is utilized so generally in modern life and industry. Benjamin Franklin thought electricity was a fluid. He assumed that all bodies were normally electrified at all times. If the quantity of electricity was increased, the body would be positively electrified; if decreased, negatively electrified. Electricity seemed to flow from a higher to a lower level, like water. The electric circuit was merely the passage of a quantity of electricity from a posi tive or negative to a more neutral stage. Franklin's ideas of the fluid nature of electricity were not contradicted by the important discoveries of his immediate successors, Volta, Davy, and Galvani. But with Faraday's discoveries of the relation of electricity to magnetism, Franklin's notions become rather crude. Then it was found that light and electricity traveled at the same speed, 184,000 miles a second, and Clerk-Maxwell, the Scotch physicist, came to the conclusion that electricity and light were at bottom identical, light, short ether waves; electricity, long ones. Sir Isaac Newton had decided that light might best be considered as an incessant hail of bodies so minute as to escape all means of direct investigation. Recently Prof. J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge, England, has taken up again this corpuscular theory of electricity and light, and there is an active discussion among the scientists of the real nature and phenomena of electricity. THE CORPUSCULAR THEORY. "Prof. J. J. Thomson has found a way to measure the speed of these particules, their weight, or mass, as well,-in a word, to demonstrate that they are real. They seem to be wonderful as well, for they are the smallest things known to man, and it may be that out of them the universe is made. Taking a leaf from Newton's notebook, Professor Thomson calls them corpuscles. It is rather bewildering to be told that these corpuscles may turn out to be electricity, matter, light, the aurora borealis, magnetism, chemical affinity, and various other trifles, all at once. "These corpuscles have introduced an utterly new conception into the domain of electricity,that the latter is atomic in character, or, according to the new ideas, atomic in structure. In order to get at some sort of a working model of the processes which go on in his laboratory, the chemist was obliged to resort to the notion of ultimate units of matter, atoms,-literally, that which cannot be cut. Choosing the lightest of the atoms, that of hydrogen, as a basis, the chemist weighs and measures his atoms of gold or sulphur or iron as if they were so much sugar or salt in his scale pans." Professor Crookes, studying the peculiar actions which go on in the Crookes tube, the source of the Roentgen rays, was led to believe that the beautiful, velvety, greenish glow inside the vacuum tube which comes when an electrical discharge passes is due to the incandescence of tiny fragments of matter. THE ELECTRICAL UNIT, OR ELECTRON Professor Thomson found a way to count the number of corpuscles within a Crookes tube, and, knowing the total amount of electricity they bore, it was merely a problem of very long divi Pro. sion to calculate the charge on each corpuscle. same. "The chemist's atom, in the new view, becomes but an aggregation of electrified corpuscles. The mass of the latter is but a thousandth part of that of the lightest of atoms-that of hydrogen; but a hundred thousandth part of that of an atom of silver or gold. Clusters of these corpuscles, varying in number and arrangement, but absolutely identical among themselves, build up the different kinds of matter-the eighty or ninety 'elements' known to the chemist. The cor puscles, in a word, constitute primal matter; they are the stuff of which all existing things, a starfish or a planet, a music-box or a mummy, are made. IS MARS INHABITED? IF F we accept the dictum of some scientists, that life cannot be assumed to be anywhere pos sible under conditions that would render it impossible upon the earth, the problem of the existence of human life on the planet Mars is greatly simplified. This is the basis of Prof. D. G. Parker's reasoning in an article contributed to the current number of Popular Astronomy. He asks, "Could we live on any one of the other planets in our solar system without an environment of such conditions as would prove fatal ?" As regards the planet Mercury and the sun, the admittedly high temperature seems to leave no other conclusion possible than that the burdens of human life would be simply unbearable. the subject of Martian life, however, the evidence is not so convincing. Professor Parker disregards the presumed possibilities" on which is based so much of the current reasoning on the problem, and confines himself to the actual dis On coveries on which there is substantial agreement among astronomers. AND THE "CANALS "ICE CAPS OF MARS. "It is upon these admitted facts that we take the negative side. Passing over the fascinating philosophy of Flammarion, Proctor, and others. the discovery of Schiaparelli's canals were at first hailed as convincing proof of human workmanship, but this argument was dashed to pieces by micrometrical measurements which showed these lines to be from 20 to 70 miles wide, and in some cases more than 2,000 in length. "" 'That these are irrigated strips of land made green and productive by liberated waters of melting polar ice caps seems equally untenable. It is true that the changing colors give this theory a look of plausibility. But when we consider what such a theory really involves, one may well hesitate before accepting it. 46 Who can seriously contemplate transformations the magnitude of which have no parallel upon this globe. How can we accept the propo sition of winters so severe as to form ice caps 70 degrees of arc, followed by summers so tropical as to melt them all away, flooding vast regions far beyond the central zone. Not that the severity of the winter can be doubted, but that it should be followed by a season of so high temperature, while receiving only 43 per cent. of the sun rays which we enjoy, seems wholly improbable. "The claims of those who picture such water supplies under so high temperature are irrecon cilable with other known facts. It is admitted that the planet is without any large bodies of water such as our oceans and seas; that the atmosphere is very light,-less than half the density of ours, even at the highest mountain peaks. This cannot be doubted, as, unlike other planets, Mars is seen to the very surface of the ball. If there were water vapors they would condense into clouds, and these would obscure the observation. "To create such polar snows and ice caps as are claimed presupposes an atmosphere freighted with aqueous vapors, and it would seem that such clouds could not fail to be detected. That such plentiful supplies of watery vapors do not exist is further proven by the fact that there is substantially nothing to originate them It takes the evaporations of large bodies of water to distribute the needed moisture for sustaining plant and animal life. This is proven from our own experience. Three-fifths of our globe is deeply covered with water evaporations from this are daily carried into the atmosphere in immense quanti ties and taken by the winds for distribution over |
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