pearance of these attractions would be followed by depletion of the ranks. Any attractions which the Government might offer, to replace those provided by the officers, would cost money; and Mr Haldane, tied hand and foot by pledges of economy, can do nothing to effect reform in this direction. Therefore, with characteristic boldness, he has accepted the situation, and is making a virtue of necessity by exploiting it.

A brief study of the list of members of the County Associations gives a hint as to the proposed policy. Lords-lieutenant, county magnates, employers of labour, and Territorial officers of rank form nine-tenths of the whole; every association reeks of wealth and social influence. To these bodies the duty of providing both officers and men has been entrusted; and the inference seems a fair one that they are expected either by social influence to induce men of means to become officers, or from their own pockets pay for those attractions to recruits which poor officers cannot afford. Certainly they will not be able to provide many attractions out of the funds provided by Government; it is still doubtful whether these funds will be sufficient to meet necessary expenses; and associations will not find it easy to extract more money from a Treasury which has to meet the bills for old-age pensions and a two-power navy. The device of throwing the responsibility for the maintenance of the Territorial force on the aristocratic and wealthy classes is certainly artful, and may be successful; but the whole policy, emanating as it does from a professedly Liberal Government, has a flavour of cynicism, of the eternal triumph of political expediency over political faith. For it is an abandonment of democratic principles and a reversion to the feudal system.

The financial question is that which excites most apprehension among the well-wishers of the Territorial force. The estimate of the necessary cost is a very low one; and the voluntary contributions which have just been discussed are variable, but always limited in amount Moreover, all voluntary forces tend to increase in cost; no Government which relies on a voluntary system can afford to say, 'These are our terms; take them or leave them. The Government can only offer terms; if the possible recruit does not think the terms good enough

he need not accept them; and, if he is persuaded to accept them, and is dissatisfied, he at once brings pressure to bear to have the terms improved. The cost of a Volunteer advanced steadily from about 17. 78. 6d. per annum in 1863 to 4l. 58. 10d. in 1901. It must be noted that this increase was due only in small measure to any demands of the Volunteers for further personal advantages; it was caused chiefly by their insistence on the provision of necessaries for their efficiency. Yet their ideal of efficiency was limited to the efficiency of the unit -in most cases the battalion. The ideal of the Territorial soldier will be wider. As soon as he understands the value of the organisation which has been given to the force, he will begin to agitate for divisional efficiency, a much more expensive matter; and in his efforts he will have the powerful support of the County Associations, on which the responsibility for administrative efficiency has been thrown.

There can be no doubt that, in the near future, urgent demands for training-grounds, rifle and artillery ranges, horses, waggons, telegraph-equipment and mobilisation stores, will be put forward with ever-increasing insistence; and it will be difficult either to deny the justice of the demands or to ignore the power of the applicants to enforce their wishes. For, if the conditions of the Territorial force should be unsatisfactory, then men will not join it, and the force will dwindle away. There is no reason to suppose that the demands of the Territorials will be immoderate, but they will certainly be sufficient to disquiet the minds of parliamentary economists. Mental disquiet, however, is bound, sooner or later, to overtake those who base their opinions on a fallacy. The majority of the representatives of the people believe (whatever the opinions of the people themselves may be) that the fundamental principle of our military system should be a combination of voluntary service and economy. Voluntary service and economy are incompatible: people must either pay or serve.

It will be observed that these arguments against Mr Haldane's scheme, weighty as they are, prove only how far the scheme falls short of perfection, and do not seriously affect the question of its immediate advantage.

In comparing the military value of the Territorial force to that of the Imperial Yeomanry and the Volunteers, the only point in favour of the latter is numerical strength; and, in considering this point, it must be remembered that the deficiency in the strength of the Territorial force is not necessarily permanent, and that the reduced establishment of the force is a matter which will not assume importance until the strength approaches the limit which has been set. With regard to this question of numbers also, every person who has any acquaintance with military administration knows very well that, chiefly owing to lack of organisation, only a small proportion of the Volunteer force could have been employed in case of invasion. In every other respect a great advance has been effected. The decentralisation of administration, the divisional and brigade organisation, the term of liability for service, the medical inspection, the power to order embodiment, are all direct and farreaching improvements. Greatest of all the advantages, perhaps, is the power of expansion; the organisation can be extended, without dislocation, to include any increase of establishment, even up to a general levy.

Not only is the Territorial force more valuable than the Volunteer force; it is more accurate to say that the Territorial force is of value to the country, and that the Volunteer force was of none; and this although the officers and men of both forces are the same. Hampered by limited funds, obstructed by prejudice, responsible to a people which refuses to recognise its natural obligations, Mr Haldane has created order out of chaos. The thanks of the Volunteers are due to him for having granted them their chief desire-the power of being of use to their country. Still more does he deserve gratitude from those shameless ones who tremble at the thought of taking an active part in the defence of their homes. For a few years they are safe. While peace lasts, they may employ their leisure by crowding to see men play cricket or football; if war comes, they will be able to huddle under a white flag to see men die.

Art. 2.-SIR HENRY WOTTON.

The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. By Logan Pearsall Smith. Two vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

SOME biographies (the remark may conceivably apply to books belonging to other branches of literature) need never have been written at all; others, though they may have been composed with the most excellent of motives, produce no effect but that of closing their subject to adequate treatment by a competent hand. Fortunately for the fame of an English worthy, whose personality has fascinated many generations of his fellow-countrymen interested in history or letters, it has been reserved for Mr Logan Pearsall Smith to make the first sustained attempt to raise an enduring monument of Sir Henry Wotton. The volumes now before us comprise not only as ample a selection from his letters, both public and private, as it was practicable to reproduce within moderate compass, but a biographical account of the writer which may to all intents and purposes-save such few additions and possible modifications as may conveniently be added in a later edition-be regarded as final.

As to Wotton's letters, though the bulk of those included in the 'Reliquiæ' (down to the last edition) are reprinted in their proper places in these volumes, together with such of his public and private letters as had already found their way into print elsewhere, those which are for the first time made public by Mr Pearsall Smith outnumber the rest by something like 100. The total number to be found in these volumes is 511; but Mr Smith informs his readers that, altogether, he has come across nearly 1000 letters and despatches from the same i defatigable hand, and that, if reproduced at full length, they would occupy about ten goodly volumes. Thus the task of selection was serious; added to which, Mr Smith has, as a biographer and annotator, supplied much new information, instead of confining his attention to the letters and despatches deposited in the Record Office, the British Museum, and other libraries and archives, British

and foreign. He has employed to good purpose the transcripts, made from the Venetian archives by Mr

Horatio Brown and himself, of the numerous speeches delivered by Wotton before the Collegio of the Senate, as well as other materials found in the Venetian, Florentine, and remoter archives, such as the De FresneCanaye correspondence; and, though in this case more sparingly, he has made use of the letters of the German Protestant Princes and their agents in the second volume of Ritter's invaluable collection.

The admirable apparatus of notes to these volumes is supplemented by appendices, including a tabular survey of Wotton's despatches, and a very useful series of short biographical accounts of his chief friends, correspondents, and associates. Yet another appendix furnishes, from the Burley Commonplace Book,' under the heading, Table-Talk,' a number of good things, sufficient to show that Sir Henry was at least as brilliant a talker as he was a writer. The provenance of this Table-Talk' is open to no reasonable doubt; which is perhaps more than can be said for the letters, derived from the same source, which Mr Smith believes to have been written to Donne by Wotton when in Ireland. That he was actually there-a fact doubted by at least one previous biographer-is, in Mr Smith's opinion, definitively proved by his letter to his fellow secretary, Reynolds, dated April 19, 1599. The internal and external evidence renders this conclusion highly probable, but is in neither case quite convincing, since among Essex's companions there must have been not a few who wrote as well as thought much alike. At the same time, much obscurity continues to surround this part of Wotton's life, and his share in Essex's expeditions, both Spanish and Irish. We should, by the way, have liked to know Mr Smith's opinion of the manuscript account of Wotton's journey from 'Deepe,' described in the Athenæum' of May 6, 1899, as perhaps the most interesting of the various Elizabethan documents among the Phillipps manuscripts.*

Of one side of Wotton's intellectual activity Mr Smith has deliberately abstained from taking more than incidental notice, though it happens to be that to which Wotton owes nine-tenths of his popular fame. But, in

• When did Wotton travel by Dieppe? His passage out in 1589 was to Stade. Donne's lines (i, 27) suggest, but by no means prove, that Wotton was in France at some time during this sojourn abroad.