because the animals were sacred to the cult of their ancestors, whose wrath they feared to bring down upon themselves if profane hands touched their herds. It is true that the rising began by their murdering 123 Europeans; but, as Irle shrewdly asked, how many blacks had white men murdered previously, and how great and how long had been the provocation which led to these massacres? Not the least important factor in the Hereros' discontent was the reprehensible credit system of German traders, who cunningly forced on them useless articles at fabulous prices and plied them with the schnaps that proved their ruin. When, according to the outrageous accounts handed in by the traders, they had mortgaged all they possessed, the Government stepped in and stripped them of it by a judicial decision. When at length the worm turned, the retribution dealt out to the Hereros made their country one vast graveyard. Thousands, driven into barren waterless regions, perished of hunger and thirst. The rest, when they did not escape into British territory, were made prisoners, and were either forced to labour or were kept together in prison camps, where the death-rate was appalling. It is reckoned that only some 20,000 Hereros remained out of 80,000 after the atrocities of the Herero War.*

EVANS LEWIN.

M. MONTGOMERY-CAMPBELL.

Nothing has been said in this article about the numerous risings of natives in the German colonies. It should, however, be noted here that Prof. Schillings, the eminent German naturalist, at one time an official in the Colonial Department, stated that within a few years 200,000 people had been shot down in the German colonies, while Dernburg himself admitted that 75,000 natives had perished in the rebellion in East Africa-a war as bloody and ruthless as the Herero war, but less well known.

Art. 6.-THE EVOLUTION OF REVOLUTION.

THE word revolution is loosely used, in ordinary lan- . guage, to cover many forms of political and social transformation. In the definite historic sense, revolution means a complete change of the economic, social and class relations in any country, which, whether brought about peaceably or forcibly, ends in the general legalisation of the new system. Mere political revolts are not social revolutions. They may represent a serious attempt at social and economic change from below, or they may be only the displacement of a governing family, or clique, above. To-day, we speak of the revolts in China and Russia as revolutions. Nevertheless, the social and economic modifications in those great countries, below the surface, have, so far, been very small. In neither case has there yet been a reconstruction of society; and, in fact, the true revolution in both countries has only just begun.

The removal of the foreign dynasty of the Manchus, imposed by the last of the Tartar invasions, and the establishment of a purely Chinese Federative Republic, have not led, so far, to any crucial alteration in the general administration, in the methods of production, or in the relations of classes. An obnoxious foreign rule, with its superficial incidents, such as the pigtail, has been got rid of; and the Chinese, as formerly under the native Ming dynasty, are again their own masters. But Chinese institutions of all kinds remain much as they have existed for many centuries, with a vast agricultural peasant proprietary as the basis of society, and family rule and ancestor worship binding the fabric closely together. The ancient arrangements have only been modified by the partial introduction of railways, tramways, steamers, the great factory industry, telegraphs, telephones and other improvements from the West. Some day these will undoubtedly cause a real social revolution throughout the Flowery Land, in spite of the natural conservatism of the masses of the people. The abolition of the pigtail and the recovery by women's feet of their natural shape are merely returns to sensible old customs; but, when the graves of the dead are freely

allowed to be desecrated by the passage of steel rails and locomotive haulage, it is clear that the established conceptions of a superstitious and ancestor-worshipping nation have been shaken.*

The tendency towards modern organisation and modern management, under Chinese control, is growing faster every day. But this had already begun under the last Manchu Emperors, one of whom was the first to formulate and decree a definite programme of reconstruction, upon the very same lines as the Republic is now following. The reactionary policy of the Dowager Empress and the Boxer risings checked progress for the time; but the attempts at political reaction against the Republic not long ago made at Peking have proved, by their complete failure, that few desire to go back to the old Imperial system, whether under a Manchu or a Chinese Emperor.

The era of a dominant autocracy residing in the Northern capital has come to an end. The Chinese of the great Provinces have decided that their local selfgovernment shall be preserved, federated for national business, in a republican shape, and that further development shall take place under the management of the Chinese themselves. It may be hoped, therefore, that the displacement of the Tartars, which has occurred so often before in Chinese history, will now be final. But the real revolution, as already said, is only beginning today; and it will have vast consequences. An educated and intelligent population, consisting of a huge industrious agricultural body and a commercial class of exceptional ability, brought into direct contact with subversive industrial methods on a large scale, must soon exercise a tremendous influence on the markets of the planet.

In Russia the overthrow of the Romanoffs was also in itself a superficial occurrence. It happened, as it were, by accident, and before either the forces of revolt

It was Turgot who said that if every one who lived since man began his existence on this planet had been provided with a cenotaph, it would long since have been necessary to destroy the tombs of the dead in order to furnish food for the living. Paul Louis Courier, writing for once in a grandiose style, declared, 'Les monuments se conservent où les hommes ont péri, à Baalbec, à Palmyre et sous les cendres de Vésuve.'

in the towns, or of the peasantry in the country, were prepared to face the very difficult problems of reconstruction which immediately demanded solution. Had not the reactionists of Tsardom attempted a counterrevolt of their own, in order to anticipate a popular rising, the upheaval would hardly have taken place at that particular time. The frequent disturbances in the Germanised capital of Petrograd which followed upon the first successful rising, the war with the German invaders on the front, the mutinies of the troops themselves, due to Bolshevist propaganda and bribery from without all this necessarily complicated the situation and diverted the attention of Western Europe from the gigantic economic issues below.

We are, in fact, looking on at a day-to-day development of the French Revolution as displayed in a newspaper cinematograph on an enormously greater scale.* A vast rural population of some 165,000,000 persons, in the 18th-century or 17th-century stage of development and culture, heavily taxed and appallingly poor, is striving for emancipation and endeavouring to take final possession of the soil. This population consists of various races and nations, speaking different languages, and all with different histories behind them. At the same time, the proletariat of the great cities, which is not more than nine per cent. of the total inhabitants of Russia, created partly by the steady expropriation of the peasantry, partly by the policy of State industries, and partly by the introduction of foreign capital and foreign employment on a large scale-this proletariat of the cities, divorced from the soil and possessed of no property but the power to labour in their bodies, is endeavouring to apply the latest theories of the scientific Socialism of the West to a state of society which is not

The difference between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution is that, whereas the French had a class already developed which was versed in local administration and capable of taking up the reins of Government, the Russians scarcely possess such a class, outside the corrupt and hated bureaucracy of the tchinovniks. That, as Russia is now sadly discovering to her cost, is a very serious matter indeed. Even the anarchical outbreaks of the Jacquerie, sometimes leading to terrible outrages of which we are allowed to hear little in England, are not so dangerous as this entire lack of capable and trustworthy native administrators.

yet nearly ripe for the successful application of such theories. Nothing of the kind has been seen before in history. The entire situation is wholly exceptional.

The social and economic development of modern Russia begins with the emancipation of the serfs in the period 1861-1866. This emancipation, as all the world knows, was, economically speaking, much more nominal than real. Instead of recognising the complementary portion of the old statement of the peasants: 'We are the Lord's; the land is ours,' Alexander II relieved the serfs from their personal servitude to the nobles, but only gave them the land under conditions that left them, in most respects, worse off than before. Had the Tsar Alexander risked a revolt of the boyars, and given the land outright to the peasantry (as Joseph II of Austria had attempted to do in Bukovina), then a great and beneficial revolution would have been peacefully effected, and his dynasty might have been permanently secured on the throne.

Probably the mischiefs arising out of further unconscious economic changes could not have been averted; but the emancipated serfs would have obtained a generation or two of comparative well-being. As it was, these unpropertied freedmen acquired their land at a very heavy cost, by payments spread over fifty years; State taxation became heavier and heavier; while, all the time, the substitution of production for sale in place of production for use by themselves, the lord and his retainers, made the emancipated serfs mere slaves of their unfortunate surroundings. Simultaneously, the increasing debt of the Russian Government to the capitalism of Western Europe, for strategical railways, State industries and the like, established a drain of agricultural produce, to pay interest on these advances, without commercial return, which intensified the difficulties of the rural districts. All this combined pressure on the peasantry gradually created a non-agricultural class, which was attracted to the cities by the State industries set on foot by the Government and fostered by loans and investments from without. Thus the city proletariat of Russia, still a small minority of the population, is mainly a factitious growth, fostered from without by State organisation within.