Page images
PDF
EPUB

(and consular officers), after the manner of the Turks so late as the fourth quarter of the 18th century.

On the present occasion the example of treating enemy aliens with rigour has been set by Germany and Austria. No days of grace were granted either at Berlin or Vienna. All male British subjects, no matter what their age or condition, were refused permission to return to their native country. Amongst them were invalids over the military age, taking the baths at Nauheim or Carlsbad; and some of them are still detained.

At Homburg, about ten days or a fortnight after war was declared, an order was published that all foreigners were to leave, carrying only hand-baggage, for the German frontier, and to cross over into Holland on foot, the distance in some cases being as much as eight miles, in others even more. Many Englishmen were detained as prisoners and sent to a working camp. We have no precise information as to the orders given by the police in other parts of Germany, but judging by one case of which we know the particulars, men of military age were imprisoned, some in solitary cells, on the day war was declared, and were afterwards transferred to an internment camp at Ruhleben. It is evident that the treatment they received was very harsh at the outset; but from papers recently presented to Parliament we learn that, owing to the efforts of the American diplomatic and Consular officials, the conditions under which British prisoners are now living in Germany have been greatly ameliorated. (Misc. No. 12 (1915).)

With the immediate prospect in view of a declaration of war being presented by Germany, the French Government on August 2 gave notice that all foreigners might leave France before the end of the first day of mobilisation. Austro-Hungarian and German subjects who wished to remain were ordered to betake themselves to any unfortified place outside Paris, with the exception of certain departments. After the first day of mobilisation, all, who had not already left Paris, were, without distinction of age or sex, to be removed to provisional places of refuge in the west of France, where they would be provided with food and lodging, and if possible with work. Other provisions of the order left unconditionally free all natives of Alsace-Lorraine, not naturalised as

French citizens, belonging to families long established in the country, whose origin and French sentiments were known, and also families of which at least one member had enlisted in the foreign legion; but such families of which any member had left in response to the German order of mobilisation were to be considered as German. All other foreigners, no matter what their nationality, were to retire behind a line stretching from Dunkirk to Nice, certain specified defended towns and ports being prohibited to them as places of residence.

Great Britain accorded to German subjects a period of seven days during which they might leave. After that a considerable number who had elected to remain were interned as prisoners of war, but some 30,000 were allowed to retain their liberty. In consequence of the riots which followed, in London and other cities, on the sinking of the 'Lusitania' by a German submarine or submarines, and the pressure put upon the Government by certain members of parliament, it was decided that the rest of the enemy aliens in this country should be made liable to internment. If they were not a danger before the destruction of the 'Lusitania,' it is difficult to see what difference that cruel act could make in their case. They were in no way responsible for the orders given by the heads of the German Admiralty. Possibly it appeared to the police authorities that it would be easier to protect them from violence if they were gathered together at internment camps than if they continued to dwell isolated among British subjects whose passions are sometimes uncontrollable. Internment and Repatriation committees were set up; and from a return furnished by the Home Secretary on July 27 in answer to a question in the House of Commons, it appeared that out of more than 14,000 applications for exemption, about 6,100 had been granted, to a large extent to Poles, Czechs, Italians and Alsatians; exceptional consideration having been given to applications from Austrians and Hungarians because of the much greater leniency with which British subjects had been treated in Austria and Hungary than in Germany. Some 6300 enemy aliens, including children, have been repatriated since the new policy was announced.

[blocks in formation]

Art. 8.-CHARLES FOX AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

1. The Early History of Charles James Fox. The American Revolution. George III and Charles Fox. Seven vols. By Sir G. O. Trevelyan. London: Longmans, 1880-1914. 2. Charles James Fox. By J. L. Le B. Hammond. London: Methuen, 1903.

3. The True History of the American Revolution. By S. G. Fisher. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1903.

4. The Old Colonial System. By G. B. Hertz. Manchester: University Press, 1905.

5. British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765. By G. L. Beer. New York: Macmillan, 1907.

6. The First American Civil War. By Henry Belcher. Two vols. London: Macmillan, 1911.

[ocr errors]

AT the beginning of the 1881 session of Parliament, a few months after the publication of 'The Early History of Charles James Fox,' the late Mr Justin McCarthy met Sir George Trevelyan in the lobby of the House of Commons and told him that there ought to be a statutory power whereby an Order of Court could be obtained to compel him to finish Fox.' Most of those who have read 'The Early Life,' all who delight in the great men who gave colour and force to an otherwise dull and futile period, must re-echo that wish. It is true that Sir George has now, after the lapse of thirty-four years, 'finished' his history, but, alas! he has not finished Fox'; and the concluding six volumes of the series are more concerned with the American struggle for independence than with the life of the Whig demi-god whom he introduced to the public with such captivating art. The fact is that everything of moment which Sir George had to tell about his hero, until Fox first undertook the real responsibility of office, was told in the 1880 volume; and he would be a bold man who would wish to improve on that account. It is true that Fox's life is now carried to a point some ten years later than that reached in the Early Life,' and in these ten years the second and final stage of Fox's career is begun; but Fox himself appears so rarely in the later volumes, and his conduct during the period is so amply foreshadowed in the 'Early Life,

that Sir George himself would no doubt be the first to rest his claims to a judgment on Fox on that first and splendid bit of writing.

[ocr errors]

Fox indeed is so far from being finished' that he is only just begun by his biographer. This beginning is no doubt very precious, indispensable, in fact, for a proper understanding of Fox's whole career. For the author has given us all that part of his life so important in forming a man's character his early education, his life at home, his first and best friendships, and his training as a statesman. But of Fox in the period of his life most interesting to the public, as Secretary of State with Rockingham, as member of the Coalition with North, as the leader of a hopeless minority during the French wars, and finally as once more Secretary of State when his great rival had passed away and his own days were numbered of all this there is nothing. To some of the questions raised by Fox's conduct during that quarter of a century, on which the writer is silent, answers are suggested, if not put forth authoritatively; but it must be a lasting regret to all those who were stirred to enthusiasm by Sir George's first volume that, when after seventeen years he resumed his task, it was not to complete the Life of Fox, but to treat of great affairs in which Fox played but a minor part.

No living writer is so well fitted as Sir George Trevelyan to make the general public realise and understand the reason for the halo which has encompassed Fox in Whig tradition. And it undoubtedly needs explaining. To judge from mere achievement, this devotion to Fox's memory seems one of the most paradoxical sentiments in history. Many men, who have never achieved much, have been regarded during their lives as wonders, but after their death have sunk into an oblivion from which the most spirited historian may not hope to rescue them. Of these is Charles Townshend, that 'blazing star,' now a mere name on which to hang the revolt of America; and Carteret himself, the infamous Hanover-troop minister,' is best remembered as the object of Pitt's fiercest philippics. But it is far otherwise with Fox; and this is the more strange since he had but brief spells of office, where, with rare exceptions, an English statesman can alone hope to obtain his

influence. For the English people more than any other judges or at least has hitherto judged-a man by what he does and what he is responsible for, and not by his speeches or his promises. And during those brief spells of office Fox accomplished nothing, or all but nothing. In his salad days, as Junior Lord of the Admiralty and then Junior Lord of the Treasury, he influenced his own administration so little that he generally opposed it in vain. As Secretary of State under Rockingham, he could not be said by the most partial eulogist to have played the predominant part in the ministry's policy of making peace with America and France. By his coalition with North his name incurred a slur from which hardly any other would have recovered, and he doomed himself to nearly a quarter of a century of opposition. Finally, in the last few months of his life he could do nothing but carry on the policy of his predecessor. To find a man who has gained so great a name as a statesman with spells of power so brief and so ineffective one must look to France for a parallel in Gambetta; and even Gambetta had played Chatham's part in 1871.

Fox did indeed achieve something definite; but how slight was that achievement when weighed against his fame, a fame that, thanks to the Whigs, is as great and certainly more cherished than the fame of his formidable antagonist, the younger Pitt! To explain this reputation and to justify it is a work of which any writer might be proud; and it could only be done well by one who, like Sir George Trevelyan, has inherited the Whig tradition, combined with a dash of modern radicalism. As a nephew of Macaulay and as partaking of Macaulay's genius and tastes, he has inhaled the pure Whig aura handed down directly from Fox through Holland House. Equipped with these advantages, he has brilliantly described the charm, the sterling good qualities and the faculty for staunch friendship, which made Fox the idol of his coterie and enshrined his name in the of this coterie's successors. memory But the interpreter of Fox must be more than an inheritor of traditions. Sir George Trevelyan has also mingled in the dust of politics, politics far other than the lofty and leisurely politics of the Rockinghams, Portlands and Cavendishes of Fox's day; he has understood the needs of an age

« PreviousContinue »