It is the settled opinion of a distinguished man of science, and a German to boot. Nor did Professor Hoffmann stay his hand at this pronouncement. He proceeded to declare "that all efforts to find a substitute for the Classical Languages, whether in Mathematics, in the Modern Languages, or in the Natural Sciences, have been hitherto unsuccessful; that after long and vain search we must always come back finally to the result of centuries of experience; that the surest instrument which can be used in training the mind of youth is given us in the study of the languages, the literature, and the works of art of classical antiquity." There is no shuffling here, no half thoughts, no ifs and ans. The statement is clear and unembellished, and it may confidently be set in the balance against the loud assertions and loose arguments of our men of science. In truth, every country which has jettisoned the classics has bitterly lamented its temerity. In France, for instance, whose students may take a bachelor's degree without any tincture of the classics, and where Professors lecture at the Sorbonne upon Aristophanes to those who do not know, and never will know, any Greek, a similar regret has been made, characteristically enough, by the men of letters. The men of letters complain, with perfeet justice, that the virtual suppression of Latin and Greek has had a pernicious influence upon French style; that the younger generation, which has grown up without the classics, writes its own tongue with culpable negligence; that its prose is composed without logic and without shape; that mixed metaphors are to be found in every article and upon the page of every book that are the work of the Latinless, Greekless mob. Not long since the poets and writers of France, firmly convinced of the wrong done to their country by this wanton separation from the past, bestirred themselves to restore the ancient languages to their place of pride, and it is to be hoped by all those who reverence the glory of French literature that they will succeed. For true it is that there is no better method of attaining a consciousness of modern languages than by a study of Greek and Latin, and if our literature is to survive the strain and stress of commercial greed, we shall best preserve the purity of the craft by keeping our eyes fixed upon the ancient models, which have never been surpassed. For this reason alone it would be worth while to fight our hardest for the preservation in our schools and colleges of the old methods. But there are many other reasons why Latin and Greek are worthy the stoutest championship. If we discard them, we destroy all the traditions of our race. Whether we like it or not, it is to the corner of the Mediterranean, so bitterly despised by Sir H. H. Johnston, that we owe all that is ours, except the dross of life. In that corner our poetry, our prose, our arts, our sciences, The our laws, all took their origin. us man in the best aspect of If we cut ourselves wilfully wisdom and courage. Even if from the past, everything that we are so grossly material as has been thought and said and to despise the beauty of the done for two thousand years Greek drama, the perfect econand more will be of no avail. omy of the Greek tongue, the We shall compel ourselves de- casting away of the unessenliberately to begin life anew tial, which is the characteristic with each generation; we shall of Greek style and Greek art, strive and cry in a barren wil- we may still allow that we derness of "material progress"; can find no better method of we shall date from our own self-knowledge than in a knowgeneration the beginning of ledge of Greek history and "the march of mind"; and we Greek heroism. The Greeks, shall settle down into our boots who "saw life steadily and saw of folly with no better guides it whole," remain unto this day than Mill and Cobden, and the the best teachers we shall ever followers of the false, immoral find in the art of life. science known as political world has been made by Sopheconomy. Can a worse wan- ocles and Thucydides, by Plato tonness than this be imagined? and Plutarch. From the works Here is accumulated for our of these masters we have use and profit the wisdom of all drawn the laws which still the ages, and we are asked to govern us and direct us aright. throw it aside for the sake of If we wantonly cut ourselves "practical" life and a full off from them, we should do pocket, and we are asked to do ourselves a wrong, which centhis by those who know noth- turies of fumbling in the dark ing of the problem which they after new gods would not pretend to solve. What are right. And it is with a sinwe to say of one intelligent cere feeling of relief that we reformer who urges us to dis- see signs that the classics have card Greek for Hindustani, won the first round in the conwithout knowing in the least test initiated by the fanatical what sort of a thing that champions of natural science. modern hybrid is? For that the classics will win we can to-day feel comfortably assured. And there is another reason why a nation brought up with no knowledge of the literatures of Greece and Rome must perforce be inhuman and bewildered. According to the commonplace of Pope, and Pope's commonplaces are seldom false, "the proper study of mankind is man. And the study of the classics, as we have pointed out before in these pages, and 28 Mr Livingstone explains with admirable lucidity, shows There have been of late many congresses, at which education has been discussed, and it cannot be said that they have thrown a vast deal of light upon a a dark problem. There was, for instance, that orgy of "intellectualism," known as "Education Week," whereat many things were said and very few decisions were arrived at. The than that it is just and right. The truth is we do not trust Lord Haldane, and we hope to hear no more about him. He might fill the leisure which is left him by writing the life of his sympathetic friend Herr Ballin, or of that other friend, the Kaiser himself, "the true child of the time spirit.' Again, Professor Murray is greatly troubled because in Scandinavia and elsewhere the English are not well understood. Foreign shops are full of German books, and England is known chiefly as the source of popular novels and the home of Charlie Chaplin. Well, if the Swedes and Norwegians think this about us, what does it matter? If they have not yet discovered England, let them send out their Columbus. If Columbus had stayed president of all the teachers to ensue it for no better reason was Professor Gilbert Murray, who should have been suspect at once, since he fills the chair of Greek in the University of Oxford. It is difficult to understand why his many admirers tolerate one who professes to teach the heathen tongue. But, despite his manifold disadvantages, he was pleased to smile a qualified approval upon our public schools, for which "he held no brief." Why, indeed, should he hold a brief for these pitifully antiquated institutions? His obiter dicta was less satisfactory than his defence of the schools. We do not like his purposeless eulogy of Viscount Haldane of Cloan, "the most high-minded and learned educationist -what a word! "in public life." Now, we protest with what emphasis we may against Lord Haldane's interference in the education of Great Britain, We have had enough of Lord Haldane. He has failed in whatever he has touched. He permitted us to tumble unprepared into a war which he knew was coming. He has deliberately informed us that he took no better steps to defend the Empire because the voters did not want to defend themselves. If he cannot move until he is pushed by the people, then his "high-mindedness" and his "learning" count for nothing. If our education is to be reformed, we would choose as its reformer a scholar who is not content to reflect the whims and wishes of the proletariat, who knows what is just and right, and is prepared at home, America would not have come to his heel. Indeed America might have remained undiscovered, and then we never should have had President Wilson's Note-" the greatest event in diplomacy," says an American, "since Austria's ultimatum to Serbia.' And that is a deprivation which we cannot contemplate without a shudder. But it is not by such obiter dicta as these that Professor Murray will justify himself or serve the cause of education. Latin and Greek are worth fighting for, and it is not the least of the moral benefits conferred upon us by the war, that it has routed the scientist and set the study of literature once more upon a firm foundation. "DONE IN." "On January 12, 1915, a strong German force, with guns and machine-guns, secretly concentrated against Jasin, and although every effort was made to relieve it, I regret to say that the post, after expending all its ammunition, was compelled to surrender. I am glad, however, to report that in these operations the Indian and African troops fought with great gallantry.”—Extract from Lord Lucas's speech in the House of Lords, April 1915. THE sleeping British camp on the Umba river lay still in the velvety darkness of the African night. Here and there a glimmer of light showed through the chinks of the grass huts occupied by the white officers, and at one or two points you could just make out in the darkness the figure of a sentry standing behind the parapet of the fortified camp, while in a corner two tarpaulin-swathed bundles showed the presence of a pair of mountain guns, the famous "screw guns of the Indian frontier. would have been suppressed as over dangerous. Looking back on it, bravery seems a poor word poor word to describe the superb lack of the very rudiments of fear or prudence, which must have been the basic quality of these adventurous spirits. Of course, once across the border their necks were safer, for the methodical Hun having here as elsewhere diligently prepared for war, there were roads on which infantry could march in fours. During the last month or two of 1914 the invading Germans had been chased out of the large slice of British East Africa that they had occupied. It was done more by stratagem than by actual strength, for in those days the enemy was always many degrees stronger than us in men, and infinitely stronger in the chief weapon of close-country warfare, machine-guns; and so the little campaign had been primarily one of wits, in which the British General had come out top, with the result that British posts at intervals of several miles had been established on the Umba river, the real frontier between British and German territory in this part of Africa. varied in strength, but what was known as the Umba eamp was the strongest of all, for it consisted, as I have said, of a The posts force of all arms, more less. or the Arab slavers, who were led by a blood-stained villain named Mobaruk. This gentleman had eventually avoided capture by a timely escape into German territory, where he sat down just over the border and spent his time in metaphorically making faces at the British Government. The instant war broke out, friend Mobaruk took up arms for his faithful ally, Wilhelm II., and was over the border raiding, looting, and ravishing in the most time-honoured style, so that quite a lot of people were looking for him very assiduously; but for the moment having destroyed a couple of villages in an even more complete fashion than usual, he was resting on his laurels in the Besides the section of guns already mentioned, there was a whole section of a Signal company, mustering nearly a dozen Tommies and as many Indians; there were two companies of the King's African Rifles, Soudanese these, perhaps 180 rifles in all; there was a double company of an Indian infantry regiment, the "White Tufts"; a double company of Kashmere infantry; and nearly two double companies of Imperial service Sikhs. One way and another, after deducting sick, of which there were no end-for the sick-rate in the Umba valley, with its reeking mangrove swamps, is very high-the fighting strength of the little force must have been about that of a weakish battalion, but for an African side-show of those early days that was almost an army. Lastly, but far from least, there was the Staff, at present sitting in the biggest of the grass huts. The feeble lamp threw its radiance on the smoky atmosphere of what the members of the Staff and the British officers of the Indian troops described in their moments of enthusiasm as "The Mess." There were nearly a dozen officers sitting round the room talking and smoking. Firstly, there was the general, a lean wiry man, who had soldiered up and down the coast of Africa for the greater part of the last twenty years. As a subaltern many years before the present war, he had fought over this very ground against ever hospitable refuge afforded him by the exponents of "Kultur." Spectacles and a pipe gave the general a very mild air as he sat under the lamp poring over some papers, and from his benevolent appearance one would never have surmised that he was one of the finest fighters in the camp, and there were some pretty good fighters present there. In reality he was one of those generals that the British soldier adores-a "fighting general,—a man willing and ready to make a last appeal to the bayonet in a tight corner, or anywhere else for that matter, for he was what the subalterns termed with affectionate phrase a "Thruster." He wore no red tabs or medal ribbons, of which he had a pretty collection, and his |