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industries in foreign lands"; and he asserts distinctly that "England for the first time in her history is falling behind."

Our author does not advocate fiscal reform as a remedy for these evils. He only once mentions it, as though its object was "to enable those between fifteen and sixty to make enough in forty-five years to be able to take care of the unfortunate young and the shiftless old as well as themselves." But another American, who claims a Scottish ancestry, writing in the 'Observer' of 17th October, while this article was in the press, deals with these same figures of exports and imports and emigration, and with pauperism. He says: : "The first sign of failure on the part of a country to employ its own labour is emigration, and those who cannot or will not seek employment in foreign lands fall lower and lower, until they become dependent on the rates and become paupers "; and points out that in this country one man in every thirty-six is absolutely dependent on the taxes of the country, a drain no other country on earth has to face." This he attributes to our so-called free trade. He deals also with the prices of food, and shows that English prices compare favourably for the consumer with prices in America, the highest protected country. And finally, he sums up with a scathing indictment against the free trade socialistic principles of our Government.

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At the end of his chapter on

"Sport," the author of 'England and the English' says:

"It is not the business of this chapter to discuss the question as to whether a hard-drinking, hard-riding, game-playing, outdoor-loving people will continue to hold their own against such rivals as America, Germany, and Japan. Personally, I believe we stand at the parting of the ways, and that the student of England and the English is looking on to-day at the first indications of the decay of, in many respects, the greatest empire the world has ever seen. The sun that never sets is setting. Nothing but a tremendous, almost miraculous, wrench can turn our stout, red-cheeked, honest, sport - loving John Bull away from his habits of centuries, to compete with his virile body against the nervous intelligence of a scientific age. His game of settlement on the land, there to raise his crops, there to play, there to live in peace, there to expand himself till he occupies his present large proportion of it, he has played to perfection. But the nations are playing a new game now, and some of them seem to play it more brilliantly, and more successfully, than he does. Though one may praise, and praise honestly, the game he has played, and the manly way, upon the whole, he has played it, this need not interfere in the least with the conviction that he is being caught up with-which

means, of course, ere long left behind-in the far more scientific game that Germany, Japan, and America are now playing."

In his final chapter, "Conclusion," he says: "We have remarked more than once in these pages that there were here and there signs of decadence in England, that perhaps we may be looking on at the parting of the ways in the history of this colossal Empire. If this be true, we have put our finger on the sore spot. Their history, their traditions and precedents, all point away from this modern tendency to lean upon the State.

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'England has been steadily increasing her taxation, steadily increasing the toll upon large fortunes of late, flirting in short with the theory that the curbing of wealth means distribution to the poor, and now she is aghast at the number of the unemployed, and at the decrease in her export and import trade. Just why capital should continue to offer itself upon the altar of taxation indefinitely it is hard to see, and yet without capital, and capital encour aged and protected, there can be no employment of labour, and no increasing commerce and industry."

Again laying stress upon the evil of Socialism, and of individual dependence upon the State, urging that the presentday doctrines are not suited to the race, he says: "For the moment the novelty of the situation stirs a certain number of them, and there are selfappointed leaders in plenty to urge them on. But not until the Saxon ceases to be a Saxon will he really take to this kindly and eagerly. that time ever comes, then indeed the British Empire will crumble fast enough." He tells us that he can only see three contingencies that may save us―" War, an Imperial Federation, and the steadiness of the people. . . . The last is, of course, the serious and valuable asset. For a thousand years these people have held to the same general lines of progress. Let the best govern, let the rest alone.”

Will the Saxon's steadfastness assert itself in the coming day of trial? Or will the demagogues who preach revolution of class against class, who would destroy individualism, self-dependence, and thrift, and fill this liberty-loving, selfgoverning land with an army of inquisitorial State officials, succeed in perverting the common-sense of the Saxon race, and so lead England to its downfall?

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCXXX.

DECEMBER 1909. VOL. CLXXXVI,

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH NOTCH.

SUBEDAR HAIDER was taking his ease seated on a bedstead made of twisted strands of the dwarf palm in the verandah of his quarters in the Dozak Post, one of the innumerable small forts strung along the North-West Frontier of India from the Black Mountain to the confines of the Persian deserts, in which, among barren hills, on wide stony plateaus, or on pine-clad mountain - tops, in scorching heat or biting winds sweeping down from Central Asia, a body of servants of the Empire live hard lives, fight, die, and are forgotten. They are men of the Border tribes, for none other could stand the hardship and monotony or the strain of life in the shadow of battle, murder, and sudden death. They enlist from both sides of the Border in these Levies, Militias, and Military Police (which are not part of the Indian Army), for various

VOL, CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXX.

motives not to be too closely investigated, and, on the whole, serve loyally under the handful of British officers who control them. Of such was Subedar Haider, and the short LeeEnfield rifle lying ready to his hand on the bedstead beside him was the symbol of his reasons for joining the service of the British Government. Sleeping or waking, this rifle never left him except when it was hung over his shoes on a peg on the outer wall of the Masjid, where Haider said his prayers five times in the day.

For this there was good reason. On the beautifully polished stock of the rifle were twenty-six notches of various sizes each recording the death of an enemy. The nineteenth notch was the biggest. It was notched six years back, when, in the grey of the early morning, Haider had taken careful aim at the figure of a woman emerging from a neighbouring

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