aíd him the more honor as such a proof of his dynastic authenticity would have been convenient. This testimony had more weight with Anne; though it would have gone hard with her heirship had it depended on her cure of Samuel Johnson. The gold touch-piece she bestowed upon her eminent patient is, we are told, in the British Museum. It is hard to believe that such great modern surgeons as Alibert and Dupuytren presented suf

Nature.

ferers from the evil to Charles the Tenth; perhaps they were the last medical authorities to be so complaisant; though the later Stuarts amused themselves, and others, by clinging to this last rag of their divinity until their dissolution.

I hope my readers will agree with me that I have taken no improper liberty with them in dwelling at this length upon so able and entertaining a volume.

Clifford Allbutt.

Attention has recently been drawn to the rapid growth of Socialist Sunday-schools-due, it may be supposed, to the remarkable expansion which we have witnessed of late of the whole Socialist movement. But there is another factor which has contributed largely to their growth, and that is the spirit of irreligion and agnosticism which prevails among the lower strata of democracy at the present time. For even as the ideals of Socialism logically lead in practice to the dethronement of all religious beliefs, so is the teaching in the Socialist Sunday-schools, based as it is on the gospel of materialism and class-hatred, in direct opposition to the doctrine of Christianity. Materialism and the class-war are the fundamentals of Marxian Socialism, and the popularity of this creed among the masses has been largely responsible for the establishment of the Socialist Sunday-schools. The tenets of the Marxian faith are strictly observed in everything which is taught to the children. Religion is never mentioned in the curriculum: nothing which bears the slightest relation to religious belief is ever allowed to obtrude into a lesson. It should not be forgotten that Karl Marx, who has been described as the

father of Social Democracy, was himself an avowed atheist, and his conception of the world, Mr. Kirkup, the Socialist historian, tells us, was a frank and avowed materialism. In this connection it is also worthy of note that a great many of the Socialist leaders have either been bitter opponents of the Christian faith or have disowned Providence and every form of religion.

The Socialist Sunday-school movement may be said to have had its inception in Glasgow a few years ago. There are a hundred and twenty of these institutions scattered over Great Britain, attached to five Sunday-school Unions, three of which are in England and two in Scotland, and the average attendance each Sabbath is nearly seven thousand children, in addition to some hundreds of adults. In London the figures vary between two thousand and three thousand, while the attendance in the English provinces is about the same. It is sufficient to add that schools are being established in every centre of importance, and that in other parts of the world the movement is also flourishing. American Socialists have been quick to discover their educative value, and in New York every Sunday a number of teachers are busy

turning out thousands of young and enthusiastic workers in the cause of social democracy. The international strength of the Socialist Sunday scholars is, roughly, a hundred and twenty thousand.

There has never been any attempt to disguise the nature of the teaching, which is administered with the aid of three books (1) the Socialist Ten Commandments, which can be described as nothing less than a parody of the Decalogue; (2) the Red Catechism for Socialnst Children; and (3) the Child's Socialist Reader, which describes Marx's Capital as the Bible of social democracy.

This is the sort of stuff which is contained in the Socialist Ten Commandments, and which is drilled incessantly into the minds of the young:

that the schools are intended "to serve as a means of teaching economic causes of present-day social evils and implanting a love of goodness in the child-mind." The way in which this love of goodness is implanted may be best described by quoting from another portion of the same pamphlet, which explains for the benefit of the child that private property is public robbery because it creates and divides the human family into two classes-"classes of rich idle people who claim and hold all their things as by right, and classes of hirelings who are thus forced to pay for the use of them. . . . Out of this unjust and unholy condition of

things have arisen war, hatred, jealousy, revenge crime and disease of every kind-yea, and death itself." This is the true gospel of the class-war; but perhaps the Red Catechism transcends all else in the venom of its teaching. Take for instance the following extracts:

Who creates all wealth?-The working-class.

Who creates all poverty?—Our capitalist society.

Do the children of the rich starve?— No; they have nurses to tend them when they are young, college masters to teach them as they grow up, and, should they become ill, they are sent to the seaside or into the country.

Do the rich people trouble about the poor children of London, who are illfed and clothed?-No.

Why do doctors make experiments upon poor people?-Because it gives them experience which they can sell to the rich.

The child is also told that the landlord "takes a fourth from the wages of father for rent." The question is then put: "That is sheer robbery, is it not?" And the child answers, "Yes; but working-men cannot help it." Then there is the Socialist Sunday-school Songbook, which contains a number of ex

traordinary effusions, the cheerful sentiment of which is fully calculated to implant anything but a "love of goodness" in the child-mind. The "International," for instance, which appears in this book, is a well-known Socialist song, usually associated with the throwing of bombs and other Socialist and Anarchist activities. The following verse is characteristic:

These kings defile us with their powder,

We want no war within the land; Let soldiers strike: for peace call louder,

Lay down arms and join hand in hand.

Should these vile monsters still determine

Heroes to make us in despite. They'll know full soon the kind of vermin

Our bullets hit in this last fight.

Whatever love of goodness this may inspire in the mind of a child, it is not through a very high order of poetics or politeness.

The harm these Socialist Sundayschols are effecting is inestimable. Mr. H. M. Hyndman, speaking at Burnley on June 5 last year, said:—

We are getting the children with us. We are getting those who will be the vigorous people of the next generation. That is the real future of the people of this country-the education of the children to Socialism.

Here is the raison d'être of the Socialist Sunday-school. The development of popular education has brought us face to face with a new danger-a democracy nurtured from childhood in the spirit of the social revolution, and fraught with possibilities too terrible to contemplate. It involves the death of patriotism and the triumph of the Red International, the usurpation of faith's abiding-place by materialism and atheism.

It must not be imagined that it is only the children of socialists who attend these schools. There are many parents who permit their children to imbibe this iniquitous teaching because they do not trouble to inquire as to its character. They imagine that it resembles the instruction given in the Church of England Sunday-schools. Invariably the excuse is that there is no other place near enough to the child's home, and that in the Socialist Sunday-school the parents have somewhere handy to send the child should they wish to go out for the afternoon. As for the teachers to whose charge the children are entrusted, they are for the most part young and enthusiastic Socialists, who have been aptly

described as "knowing little and doubting nothing."

That the popularity of this teaching has been partly fostered by the terrible economic conditions which oppress the poor to-day cannot be doubted; but the question may be asked: Is the Church losing its grip on the lives of the people?-is it indeed doing all it can to aid and comfort the lower classes in the bitter struggle for existence which faces them at every turn, destructive of all hope and self-reliance? There is ample evidence that, side by side with the remarkable growth of the Socialist Sunday-schools, the Church Sunday-schools are losing ground. Most people will recall the Bishop of London's vigorous criticism of the latter, contained in his letter to the diocese at the beginning of the year, and the appeal which his lordship then made for their reorganization.

The appointment by the Bishop last July of a Director of Sunday-schools is of course a step forward in the right direction, but still much remains to be done. Although there are many millions of children attending Church Sunday-schools, yet there are thousands of Socialist Sunday scholars; and while this in itself is sufficiently disquieting, there are other factors even more alarming, one of which is the amazing popularity of a class of teaching which is opposed to that of the Church, and which is being spread more and more among the children every day. If there were only one Socialist Sundayschool, or if there were only a few children receiving atheistic instruction, instead of over six thousand, as at present, the situation would be sufficiently alarming to warrant some speedy counter-action by the Church. But, after all, this is not merely a matter appealing to Anglicans only. Every denomination should find the work of saving the children nearest its hand. One rejoices to know that there is an organ

ization which is doing its best to combat the evil. Such effort, however praiseworthy, might be expected to ac

The Outlook.

complish much more if the driving force of the Churches were assisting.

I can't help it: I must write a leading article on foreign affairs. My head is so full of noble phrases; I see in my mind's eye so many Chancellors, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Naval Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, and they are all shouting and changing and writing and orating at so great a length and in such resonant, nation-shaking voices that, unless I get them out of my head, I shall certainly go mad and be prosecuted for running about the landscape clothed only in loose sheets of The Times, the Journal des Débats and the Frankfurter Zeitung. I am compelled, therefore, to write a strong, patriotic, calm, stimulating and perfectly impartial leading article.

I shall not write this article for any particular paper, for I am not, I am proud to say, connected with any particular paper. Nor shall I send it to any paper on approval after it's done. I have no ambitions of that kind, and I don't want any of their money. What I shall write I shall write for its own sake and for mine.

One thing troubles me a little, and that is that I don't know anything about foreign affairs, except what I've read casually. I'm not behind the scenes. I've never met even the third cousin of an attaché or the great-uncle of a First Secretary. I only know what the man-in-the-street knows. However, I don't think that matters much. If I can manage to be at the same time pompous, scornful, deprecating, sagacious, uplifted and omniscient, I know I shall get on all right. All I have got to do is to wipe out Germany in a sentence and to support France by three

strong and well-rounded paragraphs. There's another special point: if I want to refer broadly to the German Government I mustn't call them the German Government; I must say "the Wilhelmstrasse is again attempting to put us off with the usual pitiful plea." Doesn't it sound gorgeous? I feel much better already.

Similarly if I wish to refer to Austria-I don't quite see where she comes in, but still I might want to refer to her; you never know where these experts in foreign affairs are going to take you next-if, as I say, I wish to speak about Austria I can have a choice of two alternatives. I can call her "the Dual Monarchy," or I can get a snub in by speaking of her as "the Ballplatz." It sounds like a sneezing game, but it isn't. It's just another name for Austria-Hungary—until this moment I had forgotten all about Hungary, which shows how careful one has to be.

Then there's France. It sounds rather impudent just to call her France. If there's anything that's clearly required by the entente cordiale it is this: that France when foreign affairs are sur le tapis-how insensibly one slips into that beautiful language-must be referred to as the Quai d'Orsay.

As to Italy, of course we don't need to bother about her. If she hadn't gone to Tripoli to teach dead Arabs at the point of the bayonet how to become good and humane and civilized Italian subjects, we might have had to speak of her as "the Quirinal," or "the third and not least illustrious member of the Triple Alliance;" but now she's in

Tripoli with about 50,000 of her best Generals and she really doesn't count.

As to Russia, I know exactly what to say about her. She's "the Colossus of the North" whom it would be stark, staring lunacy for the Germans to arouse. She may move slowly, but think of the masses she can bring into line "hordes of fierce riders from the Ukraine" and all that sort of thing.

Then there's Britain. She's got no special pet name like the others, but she's all there none the less. The thing to say is that Germans (wilfully and blindly, poor beggars!) misunderstand us:-"The Wilhelmstrasse may know much, but the nature of the British people is a sealed book to the distorted vision of the Imperial Chancellor. Punch.

Those who mistake our calm for carelessness and see in the stern resolution of our attitude only an intention to abandon our friendships are preparing for themselves a rude awakening. The Ballplatz is too wise to be deceived by the clumsy attempts of those who have reckoned without the lucid explanations which have lately emanated" [hurrah for "emanated"-it's a topping word!] "from the Quai d'Orsay. one knows better than the politicians of the Dual Monarchy what it means when once the Colossus of the North begins to move. Even Frederick the Great" But there, I've got them all in already. I shall finish the article to-night.

No