TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12897, 31 August 1907, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

It is quite possible that if Out Mulai Abd-el-Aziz, the Sulof tan, whoso rule seems to be Place, now nearing its end, were a

constitutional or semi-con-stitutional monarch, he would be a success. As the ruler of turbulent Morocco, he is much too amiable and weak. He is apparently a man of excellent intentions; what Englishmen would call a "good fellow." Ono who was for two years in personal attendance on him writes in high praise of his good temper, thoughtfulness, and courtesy. In fact ho struck this Englishman as being a gentleman. As a sportsman ho is as English as the English. Ho -will have nothing to do with the Oriental compliment of allowing your opponent to win; the man who plays with him has to do his best. No sportsman could be keener, and all Europeans who visit him find him a formidable opponent. Cricket, tennis, polo, cycling, billiards—all these he has mastered, and in spite of the exploitation by foreign firms of his weakness for modern inventions of no earthly uso to him, he prefers games ot skill. There is something very sad about the fate of this well-intentioned man. He has always wished to go abroad, but he has not. dared to do so. He has always been cooped up in his palace at Fez, trying to govern through corrupt ministers, and not knowing what was going on outside. Of many of the acts attributed to him ho has no knowledge. His character is a curious mixture of weakness and strength. He was strong enough to arrest in a sanctuary the murderer of a missionary, and thereby offend all Fez, yet when ho was tired of nightly cinematograph entertainments arrangedfor thejadies of theharom, he threw the onus of breaking off on the operator. "Avery, after you have run the next spool off I will cry out as usual, 'More, Avery.' You answer back in Arabic, 'No, my lord, to-night I have finished; to-morrow, God willing.' " The instructions were carried out, and the Sultan turned to the women and said: "There, Avery will not show you any more to-night; so you will all have to g.. to bed." His very humanity to rebels is interpreted as the result of European influence; if he practised the cruelties of his predecessors he would bo more popular.

A few weeks ago Major Exit Dreyfus, annoyed at his Dreyfus, application for promotion being refused, sent in his resignation. When he was reinstated in the Army a year ago he was raised to the rank of Major created a Knight of tho Lecion of Honour, because this was regarded as the exact position that he would have held if his name had been retained all the time on the active list. But when the Major went back to his duties he found that several officers in tho Army who wero juniors to him when he was convicted, were now Lieutenant-Colonels. If his case had been normal ho would have been well placed on the list for promotion, but unhappily his case was not normal. General Picquart. the Minister of War, who though no friend of Dreyfus personally, sacrificed himself on his behalf, refused to promote him. The friends of Major Dreyfus then took the matter up and interviewed the Ministor, who said frankly that he thought enough had been done for the Major, and that to give him promotion to which he was not entitled would bo to add one more to tho many difficulties with which tho Government was beset. Even the fearless M. Clemenceau declined to support the movement for further justice to Major Dreyfus; the Government, ho said, would not stand it. When two Socialist deputies set to work in gathering signatures in support of their agitation, they found that there was no prospect of success. The incident caused no great stir. As a correspondent says, "the Affair is already so far away, and we forget so quickly." The terrible sufferings of Major Dreyfus entitle him to every sympathy, but tho general impression seems to be that he should have been content with what was done for him. "It is an, old story to say ithat half tho nation still believes in tho guilt of the ex-prisoner of Devil's Isle; yet it is true. Hence, in expunging his sentence and re-establishing him in the Army, in the rank that he would havo had had he remained uninterruptedly in active service, the Government did all that could reasonably be expected of a merely human institution, peculiarly susceptible, as a French Cabinet is, to th© assaults of its enemies."

When the Conservatives Pantomfimo wero in power at in Home Mr Laboucnere The Lords, waxed very sarcastic over the performanco. of youthful and inexperienced UnderSecretaries in the House cf Lords. However, the Conservatives have the advantage over the Liberals of having many more peers to choose from. Once his party is in power a Liberal peer

has a much better chance of holding office than a Coi-sefratiTe would Gave tif his side were on the Treasury Benches. Perhaps this scarcity of Liberal peers prepared to do the work is accountable for the elevation of men like Lord Denman, who thinks that too much importance should not be attached to cattle-driving, and Lord Portsmouth, who could not guide the Army BUI through the Lords without the help of Mr Haldane. An amusing pantomime was' witnessed recently in the House of Lords, when the Bill was being debated. Mr Haldane, standing in the place allotted to Privy Councillors, instructed his lieutenant by nods. One night Lord Portsmoutn had Borne concessions to make to the crowded benches opposite. Beginning slowly, he caught Mr Haldane s eye, and the Secretary of State nodded. Lord Portsmouth made.Ms first point., and began his second. Mr Haldane nodded again, and tho point was completed. Now and then Lord Crewe, sitting on the front Government bench, would catch a signal and re-telegraph it. "Now Lord Portsmouth rises, says a Parliamentary reporter of another day's proceedings. "He has to accept or refuse one of the many amendments brought forward by the army experts on the Opposition benches. Lord Eeher, the man in all the House most interested fin the Bill, 6its on the cross benches looking uneasy. Mr Haldane shifts his feet about behind tho rail, and tries hard to catch Lord Portsmouth's eye. Lord Lucas, Mr Haldane's young private secretary, seated exactly behind Lord Portsmouth, looks anxious. The head of the House of Wallop speaks. The voice is thin and light, somewhere in the upper clef. It is all right this time. The answer is on his notes. He is safe. Sighs it relief escape from Mr Haldane and Lord Lucas." Then an Opposition member puts a question that was not on the Under-Secretary's notes. Lord Portsmouth waited for Mr Haldane's signal, answered in accordance with it, and won an approving smile from his chief. One is reminded of the supervision exercised over -Viscount Cranborne by his father, Lord Salisbury. This young man, when Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in answer to a question in the Commons on the AngloJapanese negotiations, loftily declared that Great Britain did not seek treaties, but granted them. It took all Lord Salisbury's diplomacy to soot_.ie Japan's wounded dignity, and tne order went forth that in future the Vis count's answers to questions were to be written out for him. The new book on "Dante Dante's and his Italy" incidentally Birds, cites the poet's love of birds as a sentiment rather foreign to his time. He deprecated, for instance, that popular sport, the chase of "ucoelini"—characteristic even of modern Italy—and himself, by metaphor or allusion, constantly testifies familiarity with bird charms. Landor makes Petrarch say in the Pentameron, "All the verses that c*_. were -written on the night*ingalo are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark. In the first of them do not you see the twinkling of .her wings against the skyP" A special interest, however, of the twenty-three bird passages in the "Divina Commedia" is. the frequent comparison—almost identification—of of bird flights with the flight of tbe tormented or blissful spirits. The messenger angel may be "the bird of God," or another pass by "on swanlike wings"; but it is the collective aspect that suggests the most finished simile.

"As in large troops And multitudinous, when winter

reigns, The starlings on their wings are borne

abroad, So bears the tyrannous blast t»ho o.il

souls"; Or again, "As cranes. Chanting their dolorous notes, traverse

the aky, Stretched out in long array," So move the condemned in that sad circle of the Inferno where the lovers of Rimini, summoned for a moment from their' going before the wind, hover towards their questioner with yet another bird analogy, "As doves By fond desire invited, on wide wings And firm, to their sweet nest returning home, Cleave the 'air, wafted by their will along."

Other companies recall how migrating birds gather "in squared regiment," then "stretch themselves in file for Bpeedier flight." In "Paradiso," as Landor puts it, "we look up and see flio lark, and arc* happy and lively as herself," but here, too, is a fine collective simile, for in that fair land,

As birds from river-banks Arisen, now in round, now lengthened

troop Array them in their flight, greeting, as

seems, . Their new-found pastures; £9 within

the lights . () Tho saintly creatures flying, sang.

A few of Dante's bird allusions may bo merely conventional, as when ho treats the magpie, the pelican, and the eagle quality of gazing on the sun. But there is true out-door observation Jnjs well as poetio force in this inevitable, yet ever-vurying, associaTion of bird "flights with the gathering of souls.