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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
is the best that can be looked for, until (whenever that happy time may arrive) such an improvement may be effected in China that the Central authority will become an effective force throughout the Empire, and the power of the Provincial Officials to evade its decrees be diminished or brought to an end.
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THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.
(Daily Press, 6th September.) Most of us being too busy pursuing the equivalent of bread and butter to doyote the time and study necessary if we would be epistemologically up-to-date, we should be thankful that Professor RAY LANKESTER, Į as President of the British Association, bas made his annual address take the forms of a historical survey of scientific progress in the last quarter of a century. That progress, which we likened a year ago to the cautious building of a pier out into an unmeasured sea, has certainly been more than usually pronounced in the last two decades. We are n› nearer to a solution of the everlasting riddle of the universe, but we have advanced to a stage where nearly all previous solutions have to be discarfled. The PROFESSOR was careful to point out that, startling as many recent discoveries had been, nothing that was really scientific in the past had been put to shame. Science was not bankrupt: had not come to the end of her work: had, indeed, ouly as yet given mankind a foretaste of what she has in store for it. He reminds us of the discovery of argou (the lazy gas) and the subsequent finding of three equally inert, neon, krypton, and xenon. The spectrum process which revealed these had shown Sir WILLIAM LOCKYER the helium in the sun, and now-only two years ago—it was ascertained that helium was a product of radium. The discovery of radio. activity by M.
September 8, 1906. | Empire, and it is not surprising that Diplomatists welcomed the opportunity of direct dealing at headquarters as a means of reducing this serious danger. Unfor- tunately, however, the step has proved disappointing from the waut of power on the part of the Peking officials over the Provincial authorities. The Central Government could make orders and fulminate decrees, but it was still the Provincial authorities who had to carry them out-and the latter were only too ready in means of evasion, whenever it was inconvenient to them to attend to the commands from headquarters. The re- lations with the Capital have thus worked rather in favour of China than of foreign nations. They have rendered the position of the Provincial authorities, in case of any outbreak against foreigners, less dangerous than it was formerly. On any such occur. rence in old days, the local authority bad to reckon with the commander of a man-of- war or gunboat and had to see that the perpetrators of outrages were adequately punished at the risk of reprisals being taken on the spot, and (what he dreaded more) of his being reprimauded or degraded for not keeping order in his district. Since the establishment of relations with the Capital, any difficulty of this kind, that may arise, at ouce becomes a matter, for diplomatic action at Peking. The danger of hostilities between China and the nation concerned is thus averted, as neither party is at all disposed to proceed to go to such serious lengths. This the Chinese officials well know, and the result is that the matter they set about deciding is re- duced to the simple question how they can satisfy the foreign nation aggrieved with least inconvenience to the Provincial or local authorities concerned, with whom un- fortunately the Peking officials are in reality rather in sympathy than the contrary. Thus the source of constant trouble, namely the want of care on the part of local officials to protect foreigners, is rather increased than diminished by the change, which it was hoped would bring about such salutary results. That our having diplomatic relations with China at Peking has been of value as a means of averting hostilities and of securing slow concessions in one or two directions, is not to be denied. It is no small thing that international trouble has been averted by means of diplomatic action, on many occasions, Still it is undeniable that in the particular cirection in which it was supposed the establishment of diplomatic relations would be beneficial, the result has been signally disappointing. The ability ! to outbreaks has certainly not been diminished. We have them over and over again, worked up in the old familiar way half by the mob and half by the local authorities with the well known impossibility of establishing which of the two parties is more at fault, and when a catastrophe occurs, there is the usual reference to Peking, with the now established result that the whole affair is "settled in full" by the payment of money indemnity; and that the local officials
or culprits in one
way or another get off scott free. This is certainly very little to have arrived at after forty-five years direct relations with the capital; and yet it is difficult to see in what direction any rapid improvement cau be looked for in this particular direction. By degrees no doubt there will be less likelihood of foreigners being attacked in China, through the removal of some at least of the prejudices against them, on the Chinese people generally becoining better acquainted with them.
This, however, must be a slow process, though probably it
HENRI BECQUEREL
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the poly fundamental distinction between anithals and vegetables has been brushed away by the discovery that protoplasm has continuity even through plant-cell walls by canals and threads analagous to our veins and nerves; we must still pause to draw attention to the fact that there are two kinds of psychological re- search, and that Professor LANKESTER does not respect those enthusiasts who have been eagerly collecting ghost stories and records of human illusion and fancy". We could have wished that when rehabilitating METSCHNIKOFF'S interesting doctrine of phagocytosis. Professor LANKESTER had given us his opinion of PAUL HUHLENHUTH'S researches with albumen, lealing to a regrouping of mammalian species. He appears to have ignored this important discovery altogether, with less excuse than he had for skating over many subjects. With his plea for more consistent govern- ment support of scientific research we are in sympathy, though not with his method of bringing it about. There may be too much “trifling with classical literature and absorption in athletics", but we are not sure that the necessary educational reform lies in the direction of teaching all our young people science, Let us close by quoting PROFESSOR LANKESTER's rather neat ex- planation of the government neglect. "The reason is ", he thinks, to be found in the defective education, both at school and University, of our governing class, as well as in a racial dislike among all classes to the establishment and support by public funds of posts which the average man may not expect to gain by popular clamour or class privilege-posts which must be held by men of special training and mental- gifts":
T
THE WAR STORES ENQUIRY.
(Daily Press, 7th September) The Times of August 10th contains a full and therefore very long summary of the report of the Royal Commission on War Stores in South Africa, the effect of which was briefly telegraphed to us a month ago. When we take into account the (to us) evident fact that all concerned have tried to put the best possible completion on all the evidence, there remains little room for
very
practically eclipses everything in the period Save DARWIN's immortal hypothesis, and the whole scientific world has been thinking hard since Professor PIERRE CURIE and his wife, by a long series of fusions, solutions, and crystallizations hunted down the element responsible for this newly noted property of matter. If the Suu consists of only a fraction of One per cent. of radium (and the solar presence of satisfaction that Lord Justice FARWELL and helium has been known for twenty-five his colleagues have decided that the British years) it will account for and make good officer is more fool than knave. ļ
At best it the heat that is annually lost. The sun is
is a verdict, on the graver issue, of "not not cooling, then, and it has now, within proven ”; the Commission found NO these last five years, become evident that satisfactory evidence of actual corruption on the earth's material is not self-cooling, but the part
of the officers carrying His ou the contrary self-heating". A very
MAJESTY'S Cominission-with the damning small quantity of radiuus diffused through exception of three or four reprehensibly the earth suffices to maintain its temperature cases "only affecting officers in against all loss by radiation. Where geology subordinate positions and involving trifling made the physicists grudgingly allow a
sums". We cauuot see that the comparative hundred million years AS a reasonable insignificance of these commissioned officers, lifetime for our bit of cosmos (it used to be only ten millions, and with bibliolaters only a few thousands) they will now concede a million millions, or, as Professor LANKESTER put it,
as many more as we want". Some of us may in future feel less guilty when accused of “wasting time". For there is no end to it: time threatens to be prolonged so long that "eternity" cannot begin: radium loses Afty per cent of itself by dissipation in about fifteen hundred years, but RUTHERFORD of Canada has discovered that it is constantly being formed afresh. The scientists give us the great wheel of Buddhism, but hold out no hope (or should we say fear?) of nirvana. Passing over the discovery of a missing link" in morphography, and other additions to fossil evidence; and merely noting that
"
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or
the pettiness of their peculations, diminishes the shame that will be felt by their honest brothers in arms; but at least if we have to endure such a blot on the
We may derive service,
melancholy from the reflection that satisfaction dishonesty is not a class affair: there were non.-coms. of unimpeachable probity, as well as honest gentlemen. During periods of dislocation or abnormal pressure such s must occur in war time, it is obvious that opportunities to "squeeze" the nation must be more common, and the temptation all the greater. This, however, would not matter so much if there gere really business men at the head of affairs, aud greater devotion to duty all round. The so-called
financial authorities ". at the
$4
to-be-too-much ridiculed War
never-
Office