Let me put these figures in another form, perhaps more easily understood by the American reader. The New Zealander can travel 450 miles first class and 500 miles second class for the same rate that is paid by the Londoner to Carlisle, a journey of but 300 miles. Once more the Londoner pays 33s. second class to Glasgow, a distance of 402 miles for the same fare the New Zealander can travel 716 miles. Such figures, taken as they are from the official tables of rates, thoroughly explode the theory of cheapness to the public by private-ownership of railways.

Interlinked with the New Zealand railways is the progress of the colony, the convenience, prosperity and happiness of its people, and the incalculable and unmeasureable benefits that can be bebestowed by a fraternal government to the people for whom the government incorruptibly stands. Closely allied to the advancement of education we find the government railways enlisted in the work of carrying the children of parents residing in remote and unsettled districts to and from the public-schools for all distances up to 60 miles free, that the benefits of education might not be denied to the children of the pioneer, and workmen are granted weekly tickets enabling them to travel one way each day for six days every week at the very infinitesimal charge of 2d. (four cents) per trip for all distances from 3 to 10 miles, while the farmer and the orchardist have the free use of the railways up to a distance of 100 miles for the delivery to them of lime for manuring and

increasing the productiveness of their lands, while the charge beyond the limit of 100 miles is too low to force an argument. Can you, American farmer, ever dream of such concessions while the railways of the United States are under the control and dominion of financial harpies whose sympathy with the people and their equitable demands finds fullest expression in Vanderbilt's historic: "The public be damned!"

The state has not contented itself with making concessions in fares and freights to the users of the colony's railways, but it has from time to time shown in a practical manner that it recognizes that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and has given to railway servants of all grades tangible recognition of their services in improved classification and pay. The practical nature of the recognition is shown by the fact that the increases in pay granted to the railway staff during the past nine years have amounted on the lowest estimate to no less than £365,000. In other words, the state railways have given to the public in the form of concessions, and to the employés in increased salaries, over one million pounds.

Not only is the workman well cared for during the years of his usefulness but a superannuation scheme is provided for the benefit of those who retire from time to time through ill health or old age, and in the case of death of an employé by accident or other cause before reaching the year of his retirement, his widow receives an allowance during her widowhood of £18 ($90) per annum, with a

further payment of 5s. ($1.25) per week in respect of each child under 14 years of age. The value of government-ownership of railways is a subject of inexhaustible merits incorporating within a full discussion the whole economic fabric of government function; the duty of a government to the people it for the time represents, and as the history of all state-owned lines testifies to administration clearly in the interest of every citizen alike, without favors to the strong and powerful against the weak and helpless and without secret and illegal rebates, discriminations, preferentiations, and drawbacks in favor of interested monopolists, as against the individual shipper.

It means that every citizen receives equal treatment and pays exactly the

same rates for equal or the same service. It is the duty of the state to employ the railways as an adjunct to the development of the colony; the settlement of the people on the land; the employment of labor for the betterment of the state; the increasing of opportunities to the producer; the creation of markets for the agriculturist; the convenience of a people at a minimum cost; the rights of a people equitably maintained. It means equality of opportunity, freedom from political corruption, integrity in management. It means the employment of a great public utility for the sole benefit of the public, entirely removed from private interests for private gain. A. A. BROWN. Victoria, British Columbia.

TH

HEODOR BARTH, late Member of the Reichstag, of the Prussian Landtag, and editor of the Liberal weekly, Die Nation, who is about to retire from public duties and devote himself to a close study of parliamentary and politicalsocial existence and methods in England and the United States, has, since 1879, been a conspicuous figure in Germany.

Not only the Liberal party, therefore, but the literary and progressive elements of the country, from north to south, lose an important personality, a steadfast champion and a faithful friend in his withdrawal. Happily, that withdrawal is to be for a time only; for as Dr. Barth himself announced in his response to the toast at the farewell dinner given in his honor in Berlin, amidst the cheers of a large company of political leaders, professors and litterateurs: "It is not my intention

to disappear forever from the Forum."*

Dr. Barth's life, quite aside from the numerous public positions which he has held, is interesting as a study of the Saving Remnant in the spasmodic, ungenuine, unhealthful atmosphere, corrupted by Absolutism, which pervades the Germany of to-day; and it is regarded in this light that he becomes a valuable visitor to England and the United States. He is fifty-eight years old; an age when English statesmen are considered merely ripe, if not comparatively young; an age when a man has gathered enough from experience to temper his acts, and possesses the incomparable advantage of that objectivity in forming his opinions.

*"Ich habe nicht die Absicht dauernd vom

Forum zu verschwinden." At the dinner given in of Dr. Barth, in the Hall of the Association of Friends, Berlin, March 19, 1907.

Dr. Barth is also that rarest of rarities in Germany, a man of cosmopolitan knowledge, and has seen and known England, the United States, France, Italy and Switzerland. It is this breadth of experience, familiarity with parliamentary precedent, comprehensiveness of view, combined with courteous deference to the convictions of others, which distinguishes him from the typical German politician and renders him an invincible opponent. A man who will not descend from principles to personalities, and who will not recognize that his polemical brother has done so, presents a baffling front to the charlatan; and, in time, becomes a silent influence too forceful to be permitted to continue in the partisan-ridden, pettily-detailed, political existence of Germany. The Conservative faction has, therefore, on two occasions during the twenty and more years of Dr. Barth's parliamentary career, combined with those whom they affect to despise, namely, the Social Democrats, rather than not defeat him.

For the Germany of to-day is not the Germany dreamed of by the enthusiastic men of 1870, by the fighters, sufferers and toilers of the day of Carl Schurz in 1848! It is the day of mediocrity, the day of little men. No grandiloquent speeches of traveling diplomats, nor tricks to bring about tariff advantages, can reverse or disguise the fact.

"We elderly men," said Professor Brentano of Munich, at the dinner given to Dr. Barth, "grew up in the double conviction that the German people could attain everything, even the highest; and that Old Europe was to be healed through Germanic freedom. But German unity came in another way than we believed it might; and freedom is now doled out to us in an exceedingly thin dilution. Our Kultur-Kampf was won more by police restrictions than by scientific conviction, and, with those impositions of the police, began for us, as Bamberger has well said, a mass of unworthy manipulations which

supplanted our joy in an United Empire."*

These words of the veteran Liberal have a pathetic ring. Thrice pathetic in that they represent the unexpressed beliefs and fears of the thinking people of the land. The Kultur-Kampf was, it will be remembered, the struggle between Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State, which, in 1872, engaged the thoughts of North Germany, and aroused the resentment of the South. Rudolf Virchow, the famous pathologist and Radical Member of the Landtag, described it as a struggle for culture; the Ultramontanes, or followers of the Catholic party, on the other hand, maintained that it was a struggle against culture; but struggle, with the word culture as a stalking-horse, it remained and remains to this day. Small wonder that the observer of the trend of events during the past two years, for instance, when the long arm of the Jesuits has extended from Rome to Berlin, should assert that the Kultur-Kampf was won by police regulations, instead of by conviction!

Theodor Barth was born in the town Hannover, in the Province of Hannover, on the 16th of July, 1849, but passed his earliest years in Bremerhaven, that docklined portion of the commercial city so familiar to Americans who sail from New York by the North German Lloyd line of steamers. He was educated in the Gymnasium at Hildesheim, attended lectures in law and political economy at the universities of Heidelberg, Leipsig, and Berlin, and having acquired the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, was appointed attorney in Bremen. He subsequently became District-Attorney for that city and Legal Chairman of the Bremen Mercantile Association, which office he filled for seven years. In 1879 he was chosen to represent the three Hausestädte, or Free Cities, Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen, at the Tariff Conference held by the Federal Union, His opposition

*Toast of Professor Brentano, of Munich, March 9, 1907.

to Bismarck's projects connected therewith, brought him into prominence during the sitting of that commission and shortly after its close he was nominated by the constituency of Gotha as its Liberal candidate for the Reichstag. In 1884 he was again nominated by the Grand Duchy, but was defeated in the Secondary Elections by the Social Democratic candidate, in consequence of the coalition just mentioned. In 1885, however, he was asked by the district of Hirschberg, in Silesia, to stand for it, and his personal and political friend, Baron Georg von Bunsen, retiring from the candidacy in his favor, he was elected and sat for Hirschberg during thirteen years, being returned without opposition at each of the four intervening elections. He had, in the meanwhile, left Bremen and removed to Berlin, where, in the year 1883, he founded the weekly paper, Die Nation, naming it, as he himself relates, after The Nation of New York, whose editor at that time, Lloyd Garrison, was his friend. Die Nation became and remained to its last issue, March 30, 1907, the leading Liberal organ of the Empire. In 1893 Dr. Barth parted company with the Radical leader, Eugen Richter, and in 1898 became the candidate for Rostock. In Rostock he was defeated by a coalition similar to that which had defeated him in Gotha, in 1884, the Junker of Mecklenburg combining with the Social Democrats, and electing the candidate of the latter party. In the same year he was returned to the Prussian Landtag as Member for Kiel, which district he represented for five years. During that period, however, he was reelected to the Reichstag, this time for Wittenberg-Schweinitz, as successor to his friend Georg von Siemens,, who had died in office. Wittenberg would have been glad to have him retain the seat, but Dr. Barth preferred a contest with the Conservatives in Lower Pomerania, and won in it.

As a delegate to international conferences in London, Rome, Berne and

Christiana, Dr. Barth came to be recognized as a broad-minded, sane, statesmanlike litterateur, quick to perceive the essential characteristics of national life, and keenly appreciative of national superiority wherever to be found. His facility in speaking the English language and his knowledge of legal and political precedent in England and the United States have made for him more than one friend in both those countries. He enters, therefore, upon his journey to and through them, assured of a sympathetic reception. His visit to the United States will be his fourth.

Of the literary value of his paper, Die Nation, in a city of such low standards in journalism as those which prevail in Berlin, too much cannot be said. Its very existence was a reproach to the artificial tone and superficial vulgarity of the average newspaper of the Capital. Its list of contributors during the twentythree years of its existence has included the names not only of men active in political affairs, and of men of worldwide fame, such as Virchow and Mommsen, but those of almost all the writers of Germany who represent the best in science, in literature, art and the drama. Small wonder, then, that its disappearance is universally deplored. To the Liberal party-if Germany may be said to possess a Liberal party-its loss is irreparable. In the English and American sense of the words, neither Liberalism nor Parties exist in Germany, as the present writer has heretofore noted in the pages of this review. Factions and groups, combinations and coalitions of a temporary nature abound; but the solid phalanx of a large body of men, inspired by one aim, to which all are loyal, is absolutely unknown in Germany. It is, one suspects, the realization of this fact after the labors of nearly a quarter of a century, and the conviction that the real cause of the small progress made by Liberalism in his country is to be found in the people themselves, that has induced Dr. Barth to break away from

the scene of his efforts and refresh his mind and beliefs in lands untrammelled by absolutism.

"My friends Schrader and Brentano," said he, in his response to the toasts, on March 19th, "have expressed appreciation and praise of me and of the work that has been the object of my attention and care for nearly twenty-four years. I have not been so spoiled by friendly recognition during my public life [great amusement], as not to prize such honor. But one sentence of the toasts this evening has given me especial pleasure, na nely, that I had all my life taken my work, politics and journalism, seriously.' [Applause.]

It is that same earnestness, that quality of "sweet reasonableness" to which Matthew Arnold was wont to refer, in men, which in Dr. Barth converts his political foes into personal friends, and which renders his retirement a public loss.

But, as just said, he intends to return, refreshed, and, as he set forth in the

closing words of his response, eager once again to fight.

"The time," he said, "is fast coming when it will be remembered amongst us that in political, as well as daily life, not the complex, but the simple, the understandable, the natural, is the True and the Good. [Applause.] If we, in Germany, wish to make political advancement, we must become more democratic. That is an aim worthy the sweat of the brow of noble men; and it should become the object of an enlightened Liberalism to prepare Germany for that democratization. [Applause.] I have indeed hauled my bark up on to the sands, for a time, but I hope soon to set sail with a fleet, a fleet that shall carry the flag of Democracy, Under that flag I shall again take service and shall stand fast to my colors."

That success may attend Dr. Barth and his friends is the wish of every thoughtful man who loves and honors the manhood of his country. MAYNARD BUTLER. Berlin, Prussia.

may call it, historic materialism, convinces us that the condition of the masses and their never ceasing efforts to better it has been much more of a motive power in historical events than the abstract ideas of great men or the arbitrary will of princes and monarchs. We find that those who believe themselves pushing are in reality pushed. Historic materialism, studying the forces prevalent in human society, permits us to say with certainty that historic events are not single and isolated, but are the result of an evolutionary process going on in that