1908.] Free Trade and Other Congresses.—Episcopal Conference. [189 vided sufficient revenue to enable us to remit taxation and reduce debt. That could not be said of our rivals. We were now entering on a period of comparative depression, and might have to suspend the reduction of debt and to impose fresh taxation; but there was no reason to doubt that Free-Trade finance would stand the strain of social reform. At any rate, none of the yield of taxation would be diverted to serve the purposes of privileged interests. In domestic politics, Free Trade was on the side of public as against private interests, on the international side, it was bound up with the interests of peace.

Effective speeches were also made at this dinner by M. Yves Guyot, Herr Barth, and Mr. Martin, K.C., a Canadian delegate; and many valuable papers were read on the days following, notably by Herr Gothein, Signor Giretti, M. Yves Guyot, and Mr. Franklin Pierce, the last-named dealing especially with the political immorality and corruption promoted by the Tariff policy of the United States. At the close a committee was appointed to arrange for another congress to meet in 1910 at the Hague, Brussels or Antwerp, and to promote international Free Trade. The proceedings were published in a massive volume, and the Congress, though rather sneered at by Tariff Reformers as uttering "jeremiads," as "academic," and as showing a certain division of opinion between British and foreign Free Traders, undoubtedly provided a fresh stock of ammunition for use against Tariff Reform. It was followed by an International Constitution Congress (Aug. 7-8) for the study of the Constitutions of various countries, which had no direct bearing on current politics, and the week also saw an International Art Congress, which, of course, was wholly unpolitical. Other Congresses of considerable interest, which were held later, were that on the History of Religions at Oxford (Sept. 15-18), which was purely scholarly and scientific, but was marked by one sensational paper questioning the belief that the Founder of Christianity was of Jewish race; and the Moral Education Congress (Sept. 25-30), at South Kensington, at the latter of which many British, Colonial and foreign educational experts, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Agnostic, discussed the various means of giving ethical training with or without religious instruction. The papers read at this congress were published in a Blue Book.

But of all Congresses held in this year of international assemblages in London, the first in interest and importance was the Pan-Anglican (p. 141), with its sequel the Episcopal Conference. The latter closed on August 6 with a solemn service at St. Paul's Cathedral. Some 200 Bishops walked in procession through the nave, which was thronged by a congregation comprising all classes of society and many foreign visitors; and, entering the choir, listened to a sermon by the venerable Bishop (Tuttle) of Missouri, the presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, and then

received the Communion. Probably no more impressive ceremony had ever been witnessed in the history of the Church of England.

The seventy-eight resolutions passed by the Episcopal Conference were published on August 7, and were introduced by an Encyclical Letter signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of the 243 Archbishops and diocesan or suffragan Bishops who had taken part in the deliberations.

This document, after describing the procedure, which had secured thorough and repeated consideration of the resolutions, dwelt on the vitality of the spirit of service, as seen in the revival of missionary enterprise and the enlarged recognition of social responsibility exhibited at the Congress. "Round this central thought of service" the Encyclical grouped its review of the resolutions passed. In regard to the service of God, these reaffirmed the historic facts of the Creeds as essential to the Faith; they insisted on the need of providing more and better trained candidates for Orders; and on the maintenance of religious education and the creation of Church secondary schools. The separate organisation of Churches on a basis of race or colour was condemned; the training of Churches for local selfgovernment was recommended, together with the creation of a native episcopate. The adoption of native forms of marriage was permitted, provided they could be brought into conformity with Christian principles. Lines were laid down for the revision of the Prayer-book by different branches of the Anglican Church and autonomy was proclaimed in regard to the Athanasian Creed. Attention was significantly called to the dangers threatening the sanctity of the family and the growing evil of the restriction of its numbers, and the re-marriage of an innocent party in a divorce suit was so far tolerated that, while a religious sanction was discountenanced, the Communion was not to be refused after such re-marriage. Special attention was called to the need of paying heed to morality in investment (p. 143). The opium trade was dealt with, the growth of a spirit hostile to war was thankfully acknowledged, and stress was laid on the need for the promotion of Sunday observance. The Central Consultative Body was reconstructed, and a series of resolutions, too long to summarise here, contemplated intercommunion (it may loosely be said, in various degrees) with the Eastern Churches, with the Old Catholic Churches of the Continent, with the Church of Sweden, and with the Moravian body. The Encyclical closed with an earnest hope for Christian unity.

A memorandum by the Archbishop on the allotment on the thankoffering (p. 143) was published on August 11. Of the total, about 345,000l., 125,000l. was marked for specific purposes by the donors; it was intimated that the rest would mainly be spent on educational needs in the Colonies, China, India and Japan.

In a letter to the Canterbury Diocesan Gazette, published

September 1, the Primate said that the expectations of his New Year's letter (p. 1) had been fulfilled. The attendance at the Congress and the circulation of the papers had been unparalleled and the interest shown had been wide and deep. He looked forward to the devising of means for retaining this interest and making it fruitful. The Encyclical and the resolutions had been awaited as authoritative pronouncements on current controversies. The Lambeth Conference, however, was deliberative, not legislative, and the responsibility for action or formal direction rested with each local administrative body. But the great value of the decennial Conferences lay in the more comprehensive view of Church affairs, and in the association of Churchmen at home with the pioneers at the outposts, which was an invaluable inspiration for their daily work and daily prayers.

The week following the issue of the Encyclical saw the repetition of what had come to be the annual visit of King Edward to the German and Austrian Emperors. On his way to Marienbad, the King spent a day at Cronberg with Wilhelm II. (August 11) and was received most cordially. He went on that evening to Ischl, and spent the next day with Francis Joseph, by whom he was entertained at a State banquet, at which toasts of the most cordial character were exchanged. Both meetings were apparently of domestic rather than political interest, but it was believed and hoped that the first had helped to promote a better Anglo-German understanding; while a political character was given to the second by an interview between Sir Charles Hardinge and Baron von Aehrenthal. It was semi-officially stated that both Governments agreed in adopting an attitude of benevolent expectancy towards the Turkish revolution-a statement which read oddly when contrasted with the attitude towards the close of the year of the Austro-Hungarian Government and the Vienna Press. As before (p. 128) some dissatisfaction was expressed in England at the absence of any responsible British Minister from this interview, but there was no doubt that Sir Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, spoke the mind of his chief.

The supposed antagonism of Great Britain and Germany was the leading theme of a vigorous speech delivered by the President of the Board of Trade at a miners' demonstration at Swansea on Saturday, August 15-at which, owing to the announcement that morning of his impending marriage, he received a specially hearty welcome. After urging the miners to make their Eight Hours Bill (p. 145) a success by showing that it would not raise the price of coal, he intimated that additional safeguards for the working classes, and especially for their poorer strata, against accidents and dangers were much needed, and that the provision of these would be considered by the Government in the light of the coming Report of the Poor

Law Commission. He then referred sympathetically to the Turkish revolution, and went on to deplore the language about Anglo-German relations used by the Earl of Cromer (p. 171) and by Mr. Robert Blatchford, a prominent Socialist writer, in the Clarion. [The latter had described the German Navy as a menace which could be intended for no other country than Great Britain.] Mr. Churchill utterly repudiated the notion that an Anglo-German war was inevitable. All British parties were pledged to effective naval defence against invasion; and there was nowhere any collision of German and British interests. It was never worth while fighting for the sake of trade; the status of the great self-governing Colonies and India would be unchanged even after a British defeat; there was nothing else to fight about except tropical plantations and scattered coaling stations; the war party in Germany did not number 10,000, and in England it existed only in lunatic asylums and on the staff of the National Review. After laying stress on the King's work as a peacemaker and on the international solidarity of the working classes, and extolling the "strong, patient, industrious German people," he appealed to his audience to help to end the "unreal and nonsensical antagonism" of older date which was artificially kept up between England and Ireland.

Two or three days earlier Mr. Lloyd-George, who was in Germany in order to study workmen's insurance and other social institutions, had incautiously allowed himself to be interviewed by a reporter of the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, and had warmly advocated an Anglo-German understanding. Various unauthorised reports of his further efforts in this direction were circulated, some of them based on remarks ascribed to his secretary; and, while Sir A. Acland-Hood (Aug. 28) and the Spectator deprecated speech on foreign politics by any Ministers except the Foreign Secretary and the Premier, the Standard treated Mr. Lloyd-George's and Mr. Churchill's utterances as indicating an effort to undermine the position of Sir Edward Grey-a misrepresentation promptly and vigorously denounced by Mr. Churchill in the Daily Chronicle. This latter paper collected a number of opinions from statesmen and merchants strongly deprecating an Anglo-German war, and also pointed out that Mr. Churchill had been merely paraphrasing and confirming Sir Edward Grey's speech of a fortnight before (p. 181). Mr. Blatchford, whose language was condemned by the Labour leaders in Parliament, defended himself by saying that he was referring to a war party in Germany, and not to the German people.

This controversy, however, so far as the Press was concerned, was a mere incident of the holiday season. It may here be noted, however, that the training of the territorial forces in August in various camps gave very encouraging results, and that some of the artillery batteries astonished skilled observers by their rapid progress-a significant fact in view of the

predictions of the futility of that arm (p. 64). A Parliamentary paper on the comparative naval strengths of different countries, issued on August 28, showed that in regard to numbers of battleships less than twenty-five years old, armoured cruisers of less than twenty years old, and destroyers, Great Britain had more than any two of the other leading naval Powers together. A return showing the naval expenditure of the principal Powers, and their annual new construction expressed in tonnage, gave results at once less definite and less reassuring.

The political utterances of the recess dealt, as usual, with themes already worn threadbare in the session. At a Primrose League demonstration at Stockton-on-Tees on August 29 the Marquess of Londonderry denounced the Education and Licensing Bills as robbery, and the latter as Socialism; and Lord Hugh Cecil upheld parental rights and "the right of entry" in education. A similar line had been taken on the previous day by Sir A. Acland-Hood at Wellington, Somerset. The opposition to the Licensing Bill, however, had caused Mr. Cameron Corbett (Tradeston, Glasgow), a Free-Trade Unionist, to secede from his party; and his constituents did not ask him to resign his seat. At a luncheon given to Mr. Franklin Pierce (p. 188) by the Unionist Free-Trade Club of Glasgow, a letter was read from Lord Balfour of Burleigh, remarking that Mr. Chamberlain's prediction in the speech in Glasgow which started the crusade, that the Colonies would not attempt to start competing industries, had been falsified by the new Australian tariff, and that no answer had yet been given by Tariff Reformers to the question, What articles are to be taxed? The guest of the occasion closed his speech by a prediction that the United States would some day adopt Free Trade, and would then "beat the boots off" Great Britain.

At the Trade Union Congress, which opened at Nottingham on September 7, the President, Mr. Shackleton, indicated that the Trade Unions would endeavour to reduce the pension age to sixty, expressed the readiness of the Labour party to enter into a contest with the House of Lords if the latter should reject the Licensing Bill, and urged the stoppage of overtime as a remedy for unemployment, also advocating the Unemployed Workmen Bill (p. 62). Meantime, he held, the existing Unemployed Act should be used to the full. He condemned the German scare, and laid stress on the tendency of labour movements to promote international peace. Of the resolutions passed, one called for legislative action in view of the increasing number of accidents from motor traffic, which had attracted considerable attention in the Press; another censured Messrs. John Burns, Maddison, and Vivian for their opposition to the Unemployed Workmen Bill; another condemned the action of English blacklegs" in foreign labour disputes. A resolution in favour of compulsory arbitration in trade disputes was rejected; another, demanding State aid for the out-of-work benefit granted by trade

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