TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10738, 18 August 1900, Page 7

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Tlie acquittal of Sipido. the SipiJo's Hnissel- youth who attempted Trial. to shoot tin. Prince of Wales ■<ome months ago, was so flagrant a n-ir-carriai'e of justice that it would have bef-n f-irans-e had tlie British Government i!"i --i-texed a, protest. Tlie circumstances of tli«? case must bextill fresh in the minds <>f our readers; they were such as to admit of rut question a* to Sipido'- guilt, and they called for severe punishment. At the trial there won* als-o arraigned as accessaries to tlie crime threo yo#ths, Meert, a working shoemaker, Peuehot, a working batter, and M.ir_, an errand boy. The four lad." thnr average was less than strvent-efii ywiiN—were all imbued with jujarchi'-al id-as, readers of revolutionary litemturi! and att'-nditig Socialist meeting*, but tlicy boi-o fairly good characters, Sipido hiffl«clf being the best of the gang in this r «tp«*ct. and having more than average intelligence. According to his story the whole affair grew out of a chance reference by one of his companions to the I'rince of Wales'* journey through Brussels, the remarks being made, "If only Someone had the courage to kill him!" For "fun," Sipido said, "Wait; you will see I will kill b-irn." The idea was discussed, and what at first may have been only an idle boast became a, fixed resolve, the others "daring" him to do it, and betting that he would not. 'I'he extent of their complicity in the crime was the subject of a good deal of hard swearing on all sides, and necessarily some amount of perjury. But Meert iold him a revolver, and though Sipido at tbe trial declared the whole affair was only A joke, his fellow prisoners took care not, to _<*com[Kiny him to the railway station. Tlie Public Prosecutor laid stress on the fact that Helgium owed her nationality and her * independence to England, to whom it was ' due tliat, Belgian territory was respected in the Franco-Prussian war. All thin bad, of course, nothing to do with the question of Hipidos guilt, but it was ut least as relevant; as the assertion of Iris counsel that England owed her free institutions to the work o( revolutioni;*— and even of regicides, and that it waa therefore absurd in one breath tq denounce Sipido as a regicide and demand, respect for the regicide English nation. He added that Sipido thought by killing the Prince of Wales he would l stop the war in South Africa, and therefore benefit the whole of humanity. The jury seems to have regarded these remarkable arguments as irrefutable. They acquitted the three accomplice., and, though finding Sipido guilty of homicide and attempt to kill, on account of his youth and his consequent inability 'to properly understand the gravity of his teflon, they acquitted him too. The Public IVt«e_ntor asked tbat the youth who was 1>- $*jiitfed irresponsible for his action* sliAMdSt-f-eyiFvepb in a reformatory until he came of »(_! -.it the Court refused the request. An a_|»*-l might have been lodged against th. vedjet, but in the three days allowed, for doing this Sipido made himself scarc-v an action which the Belgian Government „ A pb—quently said it. regretted, Jaut for which it decli-ed all responsibility.

Whatever may be Sick and WouniJed the outcome of the in enquiry into the Smth Africa. hospital management during the war ia Skiith Africa, tlitre can be no doubt that for kck of transport, or defective organisatici, or complete inability on the part of hgh authorities to understand the serievtmm of tho situation, or a combination of all three causes, many of the si—and wounded suffered terribly, and thee i.. ton much reason to believe tliat a grat iky,l of the suffering could have been prvented by better equipment and managenwit. The wounded soldier- w_o have been isralidcd homo are, of course, greatly intrested in Mr Burdett-Coutts's statements b which sn> great a sensation waa caused, nd the experiences of some of them are « painful as anything he quoted in his long oil of instance- of preventable pain and nardahip. To take them at random, as they <*ccur in a series of interviews, we havo the case of a. man who was disabled by rheumatism and sent to hospital. He was asked .whether it was e» beU-tent hospital. "No," ho said, "I wasn't in a tent at all. I was out in the open." At night he and othrr sufferers had for protection against th. hitter cold and frost a cover stretched over them between two carts. Under this trattment, rheumatism not unnaturally developed into rheumatic fever. Another man lay for thirteen hours out in tbe open, badly wounded in the leg and arm. Then a Boer ambulance -tarty found him, put h> hg in „ splint, gave him some bra_-vy, and some cigarettes and matches, and filled his water-bag. When the British ambulance at length cu.ir.-e up, the Boers asked for their splint luck, as they were **hort of them. Tba British, however, had no splint 3at all. A thini man had his k_e_ *_attercd. The only "splint" available at the field hospital was extemporised out of tt> biscuit-tin. Thug rotighly dressed, tl— man lay from Wednesday until Friday night, when, with wren other*, he was put in an ox-waggon md m?nt off to Kimberley. 70 or 80 miles distant, the journey lasted until 'Monday _ortun_;, during which those in the cart bad no covering, though tlie nights were very cold, und absolutely no food, except •some tinned beef and biscuits which were found at a deserted store by the roadside. It was no fault of the authorities that the whole cartful did not die for want of food. We heard during the earlier part of tlie year that mo nurses were required. Yet plenty of invalkM soldiers had painful experience- of bospL-Ute where th* only nurses ■were convalescent patients. "There were •*ven in one week in the marquee I was in," said a soldier, "and there waa only •*ri« of our fellows told off to look after us. A nun u-s lying dead on «ich side of mc, *«d I said to" the chap that was attending to m. 'Why dr. you let 'em die, Bill? Why Ain't you "look "after 'em better.' I meant it. you know." he explained, apparently without much co—«ciousn_ss of tho ghastHness »f his humour, "only as a joke. 'Well,' be says, ' W hat can I do? I know nothing about Hunting." *' Yet few of these men grumbled. ir , *li'» all true enough," said one of them, referring to Mr Burdett-Coutts's cltarg.;*, -but theii, how cau they help it? War's w...r, and the sick anti wounded has to take their luck like the rest." Mo?t of 'hem. huh..if, .seemed to look upon tlie hards t!'»-y suffered as unavoidiiMe, and their K-nt endurance drew forth the deep adit ion <>t men like Cnuuu Doyle. "My 4 witocwwM lie buried in South Africa, d Mr Burdett-Coutts in speaking of the u-ges he had made. That may, unhapy, be »so, but the army depots of Engt_ contain some whose te_ti_uuy would little 1.5.. -tattling.

The issue of the sixtythin, volume of the"Die-

"Magnum tionary of Natkmal BioOpus" Indeed, graphy" completes one

of the greatest nublications ever issued in England, and the largest work of the kind in existence. The proprietor of this colossal work is Mr George Smith, of the publishing firm of Smith, Elder and Co., who eighteen year- ago had an idea of bringing out a dictionary of unwwsaJ biography. Mr Leslie Stephen, howcrer, gotJ_im to see that this was quite impracticabie, and it w.ih then drtermined to publish a di—iopmry of national biography x_ which a_ the noteworthy inh__it_-i_ti of the British M_h «.:_ the colonic*, exclusive of living persons, from the earliest historical period down to the present time should >c included. . Even thi_ was a hrge task, as* may be imagined when it is said that the complete work contains the accounts of 29,120 men and women of every conceivable class and occupation, for fame or notoriety may come to any, and has come, in our history, to many apparently destined to live urn—-ticed and die forgotten. Tlie proportion of notabilities to the less distinguished bakaice of the population, taking the whole immber of adult* who have lived in the British Isles during the period covered by the investigators, is one in every 5000. Three hundred years ago ii was only ono in 6200, and was lowei• still in the eighteenth century. In the present century it is put at one in every 4000. but possibly this increase in notability is due to the lack oi perspective. We are too close to some of our heroes or celebrities to be fully capable of criticising their claim to a place in the dictionary. At the same time the dying century has undoubtedly been one of groat progress and great mental activity. In such a work it has been, of course, impossible to please all tastes. At the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London in honour of tlie completion of the last volume, Mr John Moriey mentioned that a supporter of the prize ring had written to say that tliat exclusively British institution had been very inadequately dealt with. But he mentioned that the editor, Mr Sydney Lee, had decided that, in consequence of the interest their doings excited, malefactors deserved an amount of space scarcely inferior to that given to benefactors. On the same occasion the proprietor of the Dictionary predicted tliat the work would remain unprecedented for a long time. It had cost eighteen years of hard a-nd unremitting labour, and if anybody wanted to prodiuce a work of similar, magnitude he would hare to prepare for an expenditure of £140,000 to £150,000, and he need not expect more than I__ of tliis amount to be recouped. In its variotis spellings the name Smith occur- more frequently than any other in the Dictionary, hawing supplied 195 biographies. Then come Jones, Stewart, Hamilton, Brown, Clark, 'Moore, Taylor and Douglas. There were 653 contributors of biographies, and it _ noteworthy that of the fifty-six rtf these who died during the progress of the dictionary, some appear in its pages. Mr Sidney Lee, the editor who succeeded Mr Leslie Stephen, wrote no less than 820 articles, covering 1570 pages, his life of Shakespeare, extending to 49 pages, being the longest in the Dictionary. The other longest articles are those dealing with the Duke of Wellington, Francis Bacon, Cromwell, Queen Elizabeth, Sir Robert Walpole, the great Duko of Marlborough, Scott, Edward 1., Byron, Charles 11., Newton, Swift, Edward HI., Sterne, and Wycliffe. These »tra__j—y assorted sixteen occupy indivic—ally more space than any others in the whole sixty-three volumes, but that is not saying that they are all among the sixteen most distinguished names in British history.