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.

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.

6

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 inde pendence 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.

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 memory of this coterie's successors. 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

undreamed of by Fox's contemporaries, though prepared for by Fox, and has himself helped to extend the liberties of the people. Thus he can understand something more of Fox than is handed down in the traditions of a coterie; he can regard Fox's memory as something more than an heirloom of Brooks's, and could have shown us what he meant to the butchers of Westminster, who would no doubt have voted for him without any Duchess's kiss, and have remained staunch to him too. He could have explained why Fox's colours still remain the colours of sturdy liberalism throughout many parts of England to-day, and how Fox has inspired a party and not merely its former leaders and their heirs; and he could have told us how it came about that his family, without incurring the reproach of undue partiality, could inscribe on his statue the proud legend:

'Cui plurimæ consentiunt gentes
Populi primarium fuisse virum.'

Certainly some explanation is needed, and it should come from the pen of a master, such as we all recognised in The Early Life.' For the time has come when the history that counts is no longer written exclusively by Whigs, and a generation of writers has arisen that knows not Brooks's. The murmurs of Tory writers against the tyranny of Fox's name have gradually swelled to a roar of execration. When we find in a popular text-book such phrases as 'patriotism must have gone to great lengths when Fox enrolled himself among the volunteers,' or 'Fox and the English Whigs now degenerating into disloyal radicals who put party before country'; when so widely read a paper as 'The Spectator' can utter the opinion that

'Fox's character, both public and private, was enough to make any man detest him. He was factious, dissolute, untrustworthy, a gambler, a voluptuary, a cynical sentimentalist and a politician without principle or even scruple'; then indeed it is time for a reasoned and sympathetic judgment on Fox.

It is as a leader of opposition that Fox was great; and perhaps he is the only character known to history who is great simply as a leader of mere opposition,