organised society of men: it only acts through men: it only acts upon men. Mr. Greenwood talks of the State much as Calvinist theologians talk of Life Eternal. Human affairs, happiness, and all good things here below are mere dust and ashes. To get souls to Heaven, the most pious Christians have massacred, pillaged, and tortured millions. Never mind if they are innocent,' said a Spanish inquisitor, it will make it easier for them in the Day of Judgment.' And now says Mr. Greenwood, 'To save the State, you may do anything a wild beast may do ;-never mind God or Devil, sentiment or morals'!

Opinions do so differ as to what does save the State. Few problems in the world are so complex. What is the test? Where is the tribunal to decide whether the Machiavellian patriot is a Brutus, a Charlotte Corday, a Ravaillac, or a Golli? To shoot dead a man you never before saw, to blow up a crowded railway train or a house with dynamite, are regarded in all civilised countries, and in the absence of extenuating circumstances, as frankly immoral. On that all decent men are agreed. Who is to decide if these acts become virtuous through the effect they have on the public? The Machiavellian patriot has to decide all this for himself, with or without the assistance of a group of conspirators. If he is a poor ignorant devil of a workman, he is put to death like a mad dog. If he is a great Prince or statesman, he is wildly applauded by large bodies of his own countrymen, detested by those whom he maltreats and robs, and is generally admired by the vulgar. Abdul Hamid is now quite a hero in Central Asia.

The sophism which it seems satisfies acute and honest men that fraud, cruelty, and violence cease to be wrong in international affairs, however immoral they may be in national and social things, is simply the analogy of War. In war, we are told, fraud, cruelty, and violence are inevitable. Within certain strictly defined limits this is quite true. But war in civilised countries has its own sentiment,' its own 'morals.' War has its own morality, its proper honour, and its own treacheries and infamies. Civilised nations do not fight like Zulu savages or Sioux Indians. It is immoral in war to make a regular truce and then, in violation of it, to massacre a confiding enemy. It is immoral to use poison, to butcher non-combatants in cold blood, to torture prisoners and so forth. Even in war it is not lawful to 'behave like a wild animal,' 'to know nothing of God, or devil, sentiment or morals.' Quite the reverse! The morality of war, as understood in modern Europe, is exceedingly well defined; and, considering all the conditions inseparable from a state of war, it is a very high standard of morality.

There is therefore no real analogy between the definite licence admitted in modern war and the unlimited devilry claimed by the Machiavellian Prince. It is all very well for a Caesar Borgia or a

VOL. XLII-No. 247

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Baglione to do whatever a wild animal may do;' but if Lord Wolseley or General Billot were to do so, the world would ring with execrations. It is true enough that manslaughter, stratagems, and bombardment are not immoral in war. Why not? Because due notice is given to definite persons that, unless definite demands are conceded, soldiers and fortified places will be attacked, and your own plans will be concealed. And the strict conditions are that the attacking nation fully admits that it lies open to the same things in retaliation, and further that it will neither kill, destroy, nor deceive, except within the recognised code of International Law; i.e. of morality as understood amongst civilised states inter se.

And there is a second sophism involved in the analogy between a state of war and permanent international relations. The ordinary relations between European States are not a state of war, are not those between wild tribes around the Congo or the Euphrates. The relations of civilised nations to each other are governed by the rules and customs of International Law relating to Peace. When civilised nations do go to war, they are governed by the rules and customs of International Law relating to War. Whether modern States are at peace or at war, they are equally bound by a very definite morality -a morality indeed more definite, more aptly reduced to particular examples, than is private and social morality itself. The old savage rule of inter arma silent leges is quite obsolete. The state of war calls out the appropriate rules of International Law, and they are never so active and peremptory. These laws of war are the noble discovery of Hugo Grotius and the jurists and statesmen of the last three centuries. And they hold in check the devilries of your 'Machiavellian Prince' or your Machiavellian Patriot' as firmly as the courts of law and the criminal code keep down the 'wild animal' in the swindler or the footpad.

The idea that because you are saving the State,' therefore you are exempt from moral and social obligations is mere confusion of thought. In the first place, you are only professing to be 'saving the State,' and in reality you may be filling your own pockets and advancing your own interests. Who knows?—who is to judge? The Panamists, the Liberator' Patriots, the Kaffir Circus, all assured us they meant to save the country,' at a very moderate commission for themselves. But even if you are really saving the State, as Wellington and Nelson, Washington and William the Silent did, you are not entitled to the privileges which Cæsar Borgia or Robespierre claimed for themselves. Would Englishmen like to think of Nelson as a wild animal at bay? The Duke of Alva sincerely thought that he was saving not only the State, but the Church and the State. He was a typical example of the Machiavellian Prince strong to smite, ready to smite, crafty, unsparing '—' knowing nothing of God or devil, sentiment or morals.' He sought to save, for

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a time he did save the State of Spain. Was he the blameless Machiavellian Patriot?

The moral obligations of the man, the citizen, the patriot are all in complete harmony and form one complex system of Duty. The morality proper towards self, towards the family, towards our fellowcountrymen, the morality proper in politics, whether municipal, provincial, national, or international ;-our duties towards brute beasts, towards foreign nations, towards the uncivilised races, towards the whole human race-all form one coherent code of right and wrong. They all are deduced from the due balance and working agreement between our selfish and our unselfish, or rather our personal and our social instincts. It is a complex morality requiring variations of conduct in the various relations of human life. It is a morality which does not imply the same acts in each case, but it is a morality which from one end of the scale to the other implies one standard of moral judgment.

A man's duty to his neighbour does not require him to do as much for his neighbour as for his wife or child. A man's duty to a mere stranger does not involve exactly the same acts as his duty to an intimate friend. His duty towards an ox or a horse does not involve the same acts as his duty to a fellow-man. His duty to defend his country does not require him in the same way to defend other countries. His behaviour towards the President of the French Republic or towards the German Emperor need not be quite the same as that towards a black king on the Congo. But civilised and moral man's relations to his fellow-beings, whether in some smaller and nearer group or in some larger and more distant group, are all to be referred to the same standard of moral judgment-for they all spring out of the indissoluble relations of the individual to society. And to pretend that human morality is bounded by national borders, and that across the border morality has no meaning, that men are at liberty to deal with their fellow-men outside their national limits, as a wild animal does with its enemies-is mere confusion of thought.

It seems to have sprung out of that exaggeration of patriotism which is natural to an age of keen national rivalries and jealousies. Love of country is a noble quality. But to pretend that Country is the Be-all and End-all of human society, that it absorbs all morality, and that outside country Man reverts to the wild animal, is a preposterous paradox. When Machiavelli wrote his Prince, it is true that many of the small principalities of Italy were living in a state of crypto-polemics such as we see to-day amongst the savages of the Soudan; and a good many of the Italian despots had brought their moral nature down to within measurable distance of the wild animals. But that was justly regarded as an age of portentous wickedness and abnormal corruption. It is absurd to suggest that European States

are in any such condition of barbarism and anarchy. And even if they were in such a condition, to proclaim the Gospel of Machiavelli's Prince as the way of salvation would be a remedy worse than the disease.

It is quite true that there is a great amount of low cunning and unscrupulous intrigue in public life, which is habitually covered by hypocritical professions and fine platitudes. And a fearless and acute publicist like Mr. Greenwood does the public a service when he points out how much insincerity there is in the lofty sentiments of so many a demagogue, whatever his party. Therein Mr. Greenwood only expands Mr. Morley's text: for Mr. Morley plainly left us to infer that both our statesmen and our public had a weak side for the minor vices of the Prince. It is too true: nor can we honestly deny that there is such a being as a Modern Machiavelli-ready to smite, crafty, unsparing-in the highest interests of the State and this great Empire,' of course-but still grasping, faithless, and cruel enough, so far as modern habits permit public men to go. All this is very true, and it ought to be exposed. But to admit and deplore the existence of fraud and hypocrisy in public leaders and in party spirit is a very different thing from frankly proclaiming that for certain kinds of public life, and in dealing with foreign nations in time of peace, falsehood, cruelty, and violence are not vices but patriotic duties, and that in such affairs morality is little better than weakness. It used to he said that 'Hypocrisy is the homage which Vice pays to Virtue.' Well! but vice does not become virtue when it ceases to render the homage of hypocrisy. Machiavelli's Prince had to win his fame by wholesale treachery and atrocious murders. Now, it seems, he has only to sneer at unctuous rectitude' to become the hero of the day.

Mr. Greenwood no doubt means much more than to pass a censure on the hypocrisy in our public life. In experience, insight, and candour few journalists living are his match. He seeks to rouse his countrymen to a sense of the deep jealousies and enormous forces by which this Empire of ours is surrounded in its 'splendid isolation.' He, no doubt, is not altogether reassured by the sight of some gallant horsemen in picturesque uniforms, sombreros and bandoliers, and the loyal protestations of the Colonial Premiers offering (rather prematurely perhaps) one battle-ship. It was a pretty sight, but Mr. Greenwood is not satisfied. He seems to think we need to be well on our guard and have to meet real dangers and concealed foes, much as the politic Prince of Machiavelli's day had to do. He thinks that, in spite of Colonial troopers and mighty battle-ships, we ought to be strong to smite,' ' ready to smite,' and not go to sleep believing that Jubilee processions and naval reviews have struck foreign nations dumb with awe and into patient submission to their own inferior lot on earth.

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Many sensible and patriotic men agree with Mr. Greenwood. As a 'Little Englander' said, if we are to go on at this rate adding to our Empire and increasing our pretensions, we shall have to double our navy and treble our army. Even now, if American demagogues were to burry their countrymen into a mad quarrel with the old country,' whilst a serious war was to break out on the north-west frontier of India, and the dream of the Junker came true to form a tripartite coalition to fall upon the British whale on all sides at once, we should have enough to do to save the State.' And perhaps, after all, the Cape Colony battleship might not be quite ready in time, and the splendid young troopers might be wanted at home. Sensible and patriotic men will be found who agree with Mr. Greenwood that there are perils around us and need of altogether new energy and wariness. For a whole half-century, from Waterloo to Sadowa, no sensible Englishman could suppose that in a week this nation might be fighting for its existence, or that Machiavellian princes stood around it, watching the moment to make a deadly spring. That comfortable assurance exists no longer. Since the era of Blood and Iron, the dismemberment of France, and all that has happened since 1870, there has been a new departure in things international. Enormous armaments, instantaneous mobilization, secret alliances, and the madness of bigness,' have turned the heads of most of the great nations.

Europe has come into a measurable distance of the Machiavellian era when princes were believed capable of almost any midnight coup de main. It is true that the fleet is enormously powerful; perhaps more powerful for the hour, even relatively, than it has been for nearly a century. Good observers even believe that it could hold its own against any practical coalition whatever, even of many other Powers. True: but its duties, in case of war, would also be enormous. It is also true that the spirit of the nation, and the organisation and moral of the Empire have never been so high since Waterloo. But again its abnormal extent and distribution over the planet make its defence against a vast coalition exceptionally difficult. And the vast coalition against this truly abnormal Empire-an Empire utterly beyond the record of history, and beyond the dreams of conquering kings- already exists in a dormant, potential, subjective state, as our leading statesmen admit and almost boast. This combined onslaught on Albion-the rich, ubiquitous favourite of Fortune-is the day dream of every Jingo journalist on both sides of the Atlantic, and the nightly dream of more than one public man who is, or may become, a dominant power in Europe. Enormous as is the wealth and resource of the Empire, supreme as is its naval power, ardent as are its patriotism, its courage, and its tenacity, no thoughtful observer can deny that, by its geographical conditions plus its inevitable isolation, and the envy that its wonderful prosperity