ences were composed entirely of imbeciles. They generously credit the men whose support they ask with the brains of rabbits. They pour into their ears floods of words which have no meaning, no coherence. They are sure that the commonest images, the silliest jokes are good enough to dazzle those whose will, in their phrase of grandiloquent flattery, must and shall prevail. Wherever there is a democracy you will find the triumph of shoddy eloquence. England is not alone in her disgrace. The spouters of France, following an evil example, already speak of "la coupe aux lèvres." And if America had done nothing more than produce Senator Smith she need not fear the competition of any rival. Yet this supremacy of nonsense must be set down to the credit of the people. Without the general approval not even a French municipal counsellor, not even Senator Smith himself, could descend to the turbid depths of what the Americans appropriately style "guff."

The wreck of the Titanic was Senator Smith's opportunity. This eminent politician concluded the tragedy with a satiric drama of his own. He introduced, into a solemn occasion, the comedy of ignorance. He deemed himself competent to discover the cause of a disaster at sea, though he seemed to think that a water-tight compartment was a refuge into which drowning men might creep for safety, and though he demanded anxiously what was

an iceberg and whence it came. But the undesigned touches of farce which this landsman imparted into a solemn discussion are insignificant beside the oration which he delivered to his delighted countrymen. To describe this oration adequately is impossible. We bow before it in respectful humbleness. The fact that it was listened to with some show of gravity makes the whole American people an accomplice in its magnificent absurdity. Senator Smith must share the responsibility with the vast mass of his fellowcitizens. His complete lack of humour is no more than we should expect. The fact that there are ten times as many professional humourists in America as in all the rest of the world does not disprove, rather it explains, the natural solemnity of the people. And Senator Smith's oration suggests that there is something in the American character which suffers no change. In spite of ceaseless immigration, the Land of the Free remains faithful to its primitive love of rhetoric. You may match the rodomontade of Senator Smith in every satire penned against America since the days of Dickens. The blood of God's own country suffers a weekly admixture. And while the type of this confused race, rejecting all European peculiarities, tends year by year to approximate to the type of the North American Indian, its demagogues preserve inviolate the old provincial tub - thumping,

But it is time to give a few specimens of Senator's Smith's oratory. The best of the Senator is that he is always equal to himself. He seldom falls below the high level of his own bombast. He calls the Titanic "a majestic pile." What else could he call her? "Builders of renown," says he, "had launched her on the billows with confident assurance of her strength." "Builders of renown!" How can we be sufficiently thankful for that magnificent commonplace? Then mark what happened. "The ship went down"-these are the Senator's own words "carrying as needless a sacrifice of noble women and brave men as ever clustered about the Judgment Seat in any single moment of passing time." As he spoke these words of reckless exaggeration, was there a dry eye in all Washington? We think not. Even the hardened cheek of the Senator himself was bedewed with tears.

Then turned he gravely to the dead captain. For forty years," said he, "the Storm King had sought in vain to vex him and to menace his craft; but once before in all his honourable career was his pride humbled or his vessel maimed." His pride and confidence were his undoing. "With the atmosphere literally charged with warning signals and wireless messages registering their last appeal, the stokers in the engine-room fed their fires with fresh fuel, registering

VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXI.

vessel's fastest speed. At that moment the ice stole upon her as hard as steel," &c. Thus the Senator, with much more to the same effect, proving in every line of irrelevant pomp and gushing imagery how brave a "newspaper man was lost in this talkative lawyer. And so at last he pointed the moral of his address. "When the world weeps together over & common loss, said he, "when Nature moves in the same direction in all spheres, why should not the nations clear the sea of its conflicting idioms and wisely regulate this new servant of humanity?" Why, indeed, should they not? And then in the most splendid bathos within the whole range of oratory, Senator Smith tells us how it shall be done: "to that end wages must be increased"! After a weeping world and Nature moving in all spheres, this collapse of sentiment was a stern disappointment. A still sterner disappointment it was to discover that the Senator had employed all the resources of his matchless rhetoric, had mixed

his metaphors, and mingled his tears with the tears of two continents, merely to administer a snub to the Britisher. Surely this highly desirable feat might have been more quickly and more neatly performed. Of what use are Storm Kings and Majestic Piles, if they stand between the Britisher and America's oud gel? Two columns of fine phrases separated us, as we

I

read, from the Senator's censure. All the blame of the disaster lies, of course, at the door of England, "the "the Old World where there is no endurance." All the hope of the future is in the hardy American. "Men of strength and spirit there must be, won back to a calling already demoralised and decadent." That is a blow struck at the very heart of England's self-esteem. And there is no doubt as to where these heroes are to be found. "Americans must re-enlist in this service, they must become the soldiers of the sea."

We are not surprised at the Senator's conclusion. We have so long been accustomed to the chastening rod of America, that we ask nothing less and nothing more of her than the compliment of her of her censure. What does astonish us is the incorrigible provincialism of the Senator's style and manner. Words stripped of meaning and far divorced from intelligence are sorry things, and much as we appreciate the condemnation of America, we would that it had been better and more concisely expressed. Nor can we congratulate ourselves that fustian is the exclusive possession of the United States. Our own notorious Chancellor of the Exchequer easily outdoes Senator Smith on his chosen ground. Mr Lloyd George is falling behind in the race of politics. He forced the pace at the beginning with so blind a fury that he is unable to keep it up. And he takes his ill success, as weak men

always take it, with a manifest loss of temper. In old times, when he felt sure of himself and his position, he was very careful to separate his two manners. He did not permit Limehouse to intrude upon the House of Commons. But now it is all one to him. Westminster and Limehouse, Swansea and Newcastle-they are but so many stages upon which the rhetorical melodrama of Mr Lloyd George oan be played. And truly that melodrama was never played with noisier effect than at Mr Lloyd George's last appearance at Swansea. He was at home, and he meant to make the best of it. He echoed with energy and precision all the silly thoughts that were flitting about the heads of his audience. He gave a brilliant example of the true Iberian's trick: he knew exactly what extravagances would be palatable to his friends. Perhaps he reached the topmost height of folly when he declared with unctuous pomp that "the honour of the Nonconformist peasant was as precious as that of the proudest baron in the land." That platitude would be hard to match. A sentence, composed in another vein, runs it very close. "The men for whom they worked," he told his supporters, "grudged them every inch of sunlight, space, and breathing-ground." What can you say to such a statement as this? It does not deserve the compliment of contradiction. To argue with the man who made it would be a

piece of superfluous folly. We can only be thankful that the world tires of nothing so quickly as of a tongue which utters less sense than a clapper to scare the birds.

One or two blossoms from Mr George's anthology of abuse may yet be culled. "Vessels consecrated to the sanctuary are still on their sideboards," he screamed. "The meat dedicated to the altar stock their larders to-day. There are thousands of them." And again: "Go to Primrose meetings; look at the platform. One third of them are probably people who have got Church land. The very primroses which adorn their button-holes are plucked from land conseorated to the service of the altar." Was ever such stuff as this spoken by a Cabinet Minister? It is idle to ask Mr Lloyd George to correct his statements by a reading of history. He is far too busy speaking to read books, and if he read them, it is unlikely that he could understand them. Besides, he needs all the leisure which he can spare, for the composition of that daily letter to The Times,' in which he attempts to justify his inaccuracies. Poor man! Great and good as he is, he is not happy. "I will tell you what is the matter with this country," he cried. "There is one limited Monarchy here, and there are ten thousand little Czars." After this his panegyrio of Nonconformity must have fallen a trifle flat. We have little faith in those altars with

which, Mr Lloyd George says, Nonconformity is covering the land. Of what use are altars if the flame of truth is never permitted to burn upon them?

Senator Smith and Mr Lloyd George, we believe, both follow the profession of the law. Their craft exacts above all things a precise accuracy of speech. The courts are the stern enemies of exaggeration. If Senator Smith and Mr Lloyd George employed the same language in their business as they deem good enough for the people's ear, they would deservedly be left without clients. Such wisdom as is theirs, then, they dedicate to their private advantage. They make no scruple of letting loose their nonsense upon the public. Was there ever a bitterer comment than this upon democracy? These demagogues confess by their careers that for the management of an office some tact and discretion are necessary. They cry aloud from the platform that those who aspire to govern great empires may be quite content with bunkum and claptrap. And neither of them has risen to the full height of his opportunity. Their peculiar gifts would surely be seen to better advantage on the variety stage. Some years ago, in the heyday of Limehouse, the manager of an American music hall telegraphed to Mr Lloyd George that, if only he would appear in New York, he might name his own terms. A similar compliment has now been paid to Senator Smith, who has

been invited to do a "turn" in London. It is by such interchanges of flattery as this that foreign countries are knit together in the bonds of peace, and we regret that we cannot lend our Mr Lloyd George to New York for a while, and console ourselves with the expansive platitudes of America's greatest senator.

Mr Lloyd George asserts that the revenues of the Church in Wales have been diverted from the service of the people. He pretends that he will restore these revenues to the people in the shape of free libraries, which the people does not desire, and which Mr Carnegie, who lives merely to distribute unnecessary books, will gladly give for nothing. However, as the only purpose of disendowment is to deprive the Church of her revenues, the spending of the money taken away is a secondary object. And what is best worth considering is the direct consequence to the Church of this deprivation. The experience of France, which some years ago committed an act of similar injustice, is not without its value for us. The money, of which the Church was despoiled, did not do the State much good. A vast deal of it was embezzled and spent upon unworthy objects. France is no richer to-day than she was. The Church is infinitely poorer, and thus of course the object arrived at by her enemies is attained. But there is one result of disendowment which was not foreseen

with sufficient clearness. The churches, which were the pride and glory of France, are everywhere falling to the ground. It is not merely of religion that the French people has been robbed. The ancient fabrics, which for centuries have been the centre of their lives and hopes, are permitted to crumble in pieces before their eyes.

Some time since M. Maurice Barrès, one of the few Frenchmen who are Tories in our English sense of the word, pointed out in an eloquent speech the disaster which was overtaking France. The rain, the snow, and the winters, he said, were doing their work. In many parts of the country, he pointed out, the parishes are too poor to repair their churches; even where money is not lacking, the violent acrimony of sectarians aids the process of natural demolition. And here the fate of the French Church is far bitterer than the fate of the disendowed Church in Wales will be. In France the churches became the property not of the disestablished Church, but of the municipality, which was permitted to do what it chose with the buildings its representatives refused to enter. The municipality is, then, in a position to extinguish the last spark of religious worship. It can demn a church as unsafe to harbour the inhabitants of its parish, and can then refuse to authorise repairs. One church, closed by order, has