my dear Urbanus, you and your friends are living in a fool's paradise. Worse still, you are bent on a policy of the most brutal selfishness.

U. Perhaps you will have the goodness to explain yourself?

R. Certainly. Let us take the two charges in order. First, then, I assert that you are living in a fool's paradise: in other words, that the actual results of the change you mean to bring about will be wholly unlike those you anticipate. You and your friends desire, so I understand, some form of Disestablishment.' Now what is that form to be? Give us, not vague talk, but a practicable scheme.

U. I have told you already that we don't bind ourselves at present to any particular scheme. The details can be arranged later.

R. Can they? Just consider your position in a practical way. The question of Disestablishment, we may suppose, will be in the forefront at the next general election. Then, if your words mean anything, you will support those Parliamentary candidates who will pledge themselves to vote in favour of a Disestablishment Bill.

U. Certainly on their promise to support only a measure drawn on equitable lines.

R. My dear Urbanus, your ignorance of Parliamentary human nature is really sublime! How many of those promises, do you imagine, will be recalled when-thanks to your exertions—a Radical Government, largely composed of Dissenters, has been placed in power? Then your scheme of some form of Disestablishment' will be shaped for you by those who are the avowed enemies of the Church-and pretty treatment we may expect at their hands!

U. I admitted, you will remember, that there would be some temporary hardships to be faced.

R. Yes; that comes under the head of 'brutal selfishness,' which I am coming to directly.

U. Brutal selfishness'-when we propose cheerfully to suffer for the welfare of the Church! Really, Rusticus!

R. Wait a minute. I haven't quite done with the 'fool's paradise' aspect of your policy. Next, you wish to see Convocation the governing body of the Church. Well and good. But do you really suppose that the majority of Convocation will be in sympathy with Catholic views? If so, I'm afraid that you are greatly mistaken. Then there is the question of patronage; how is that to be managed?

U. That again is a detail, and one of no great importance. Any change must be an improvement on the present system. Perhaps the patronage would be administered by a central Board, with the assistance of the Parochial Councils.

R. And, once more, are you blind to the fact that the vast majority of these Parochial Councils will be strongly Protestant? Living here, as you do, in town, I'm afraid that you have a totally false impression of the relative strength of the Church parties in the country at large. You take part in well-attended E.C.U.

meetings, you address your Parochial Church Council-which, by the way, is practically a packed body, and very different from the council which would be elected by a popular vote-and so you really come to believe that the majority of English people are of our way of thinking in regard to doctrine and ritual.

U. You surely won't deny that the Catholic party is steadily growing in numbers and influence?

R. No doubt; but it is still-and will be for many years to come-in a hopeless minority. It is simply by virtue of the Establishment, in spite of the obvious defects of the system, that we Catholics and the extreme Evangelicals can co-exist within the confines of the same Church.

U. That seems to me a very questionable advantage. I don't want to seem uncharitable, Rusticus, but I often wish that the extreme Evangelicals could be driven to declare themselves for what they really are-Dissenters. Why should they be allowed to masquerade as Churchmen while they hold views inconsistent with the very idea of a Church? If Disestablishment forces them to leave the Church of which they are only nominal members, so much the better.

R. Yes, my dear Urbanus, but doesn't it occur to you that these same Evangelicals hold precisely similar views about us? They believe firmly that the High Church party is really endeavouring to restore the power of Rome, and between Catholic and Roman Catholic they are quite unable to distinguish. That, no doubt, shows their extreme ignorance, yet it is the view which they sincerely hold. And they talk about us in just the language which you employed about them. These Ritualists,' they say in effect, are Papists in disguise. Let us make it impossible for them to remain in the Protestant Church of England, and force them to declare themselves in their true colours.' And now perhaps you see the drift of my argument. Under the Establishment both these parties can co-exist. In a Disestablished Church there will be at once a bitter fight for supremacy in Convocation and in each of your Diocesan Synods and Parochial Councils. The weaker will go to the wall. And the weaker-indubitably the weaker at present, whatever it may be fifty years hence is the High Church party.

U. You are indeed a cheerful prophet! Pray complete your picture; what will happen to us then?

R. I don't know. A few may secede to Rome in despair. Probably most of us will be in a position rather like that of the Nonjurors, and the Catholic party will degenerate into a mere sect. But at least I have proved my point, I think, that when you talk of 'freedom,' 'spiritual liberty,' and so on, as the certain result of Disestablishment, you are living in a fool's paradise. As a matter of fact, you will have exchanged the occasional interference of the Privy Council for the continued tyranny of a Protestant Convocation and

Synod and Parochial Board. And you will be infinitely worse off than you were before.

U. Well, I never expected to hear these Erastian sentiments from your lips, Rusticus. You really believe, then, that her subjection to the State makes for the good of the Church?

R. On the contrary, I am a firm believer in Disestablishment. U. What?

R. Let me finish. Say, fifty years hence. By that time, if the clergy will spend the interval not on the platform but in teaching and educating the people, Disestablishment will be desirable. At present, for the reasons I have given, it is quite the reverse.

U. They hardly deserve to be called reasons, do they? All that you have said is simply your own dismal forecast of what the consequences of Disestablishment will be. We consider the same facts and arrive at another conclusion.

R. No, you jump to another conclusion, and deliberately turn your back on the facts. You and your friends talk vaguely of 'some form of Disestablishment,' but you abstain from considering plain facts in a common-sense way. It is so much pleasanter to make perorations about the tyranny of the Privy Council!

U. Yes, and our policy is one of brutal selfishness.' You have yet to explain that remarkable statement of yours, Rusticus.

R. It is simple enough. Mind, nearly all this cry for rushing on Disestablishment comes from you town clergy. And what do you propose to gain by it?

U. The spiritual freedom of the Church.

R. Which, being interpreted, means liberty to use all sorts of fancy ritual and Continental services which have no place in the history of the Church of England. I am often called a Ritualist, and in my parish, as you know, we have a Catholic ceremonial-that is to say, we use lights and vestments. But, to be quite frank, your methods at St. Elfrida's simply nauseate me.

U. And yet you call yourself a follower of the Tractarians!

R. Yes; and, I venture to think, with a better claim to that title than you can show. This morning I went to Mass, as you prefer to term it, in your church. The whole was said almost inaudibly, there were all sorts of interpolations, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could follow the service at all. I couldn't help thinking that such men as Pusey and Keble would have been far happier at the most simple celebration, provided it was reverently done, than with such a service as this. And you're not content with maiming the Rite in this way, but you want Benediction and other pseudo-Roman Services as well.

U. Why shouldn't we wish to use them, if our congregation would

value them?

R. Your congregation! Upon my word, Urbanus, your 'congre

gationalism' is worse than that of the Evangelicals. Is this, then, to be your test-not 'has this service primitive authority, is it congruous with the teaching and the history of the English Church'—but merely will it tickle the fancy of our congregation'? What do you suppose Pusey or Keble would have said to argument of that kind?

U. My dear Rusticus, you are exciting yourself unnecessarily, owing to your passion for details. We are not fighting for this or that service, but for the principle of spiritual freedom.

R. Yes, and at what cost? You admitted that Disestablishment would involve 'some temporary hardship.' That is very well for you town clergy, who would feel no hardship whatever, since you are supported by pew-rents and offertories, and not by endowments. But in the country, your 'temporary hardship' would mean nothing less than that the work of the Church, for a generation at least, would be brought to a standstill. In order to gain your fancy ritual, you propose to de-Christianise hundreds of country parishes-parishes where there are no wealthy laymen, or, worse still, there is a bigoted Protestant Squire. And if that is not brutal selfishness, I do not know what is.

U. Well, Rusticus, evidently we shall not agree. But I am glad that you believe at least in the principle of Disestablishment.

R. Yes-when you have educated the people in Church matters. To teach-I cannot say it too emphatically-that is our duty for the present. And it is a duty which I fear we have ceased to fulfil. To forget our polemics, to forego fancy services, if only because we have got to convince the average Englishman that we are not Papists in disguise; to be stern, as the Tractarians were stern, in disciplining our own lives-that, I think, would be a wiser course than to play into the hands of our enemies by clamouring for Disestablishment.

U. Yes, but suppose our Erastian Bishops yield still further to this senseless agitation? They have forbidden incense, suppose they now interdict vestments, or the Eastward Position? What will your next move be?

R. I decline to discuss remote improbabilities. But I am quite certain what my next move will be.

U. Indeed?

R. Yes it will be-upstairs. Good night, Urbanus; I am going to bed.

ANTHONY C. DEANE.

THE WAR-CLOUD IN THE FARTHEST

EAST

Two great questions claim the attention of the public at present-one is connected with the ultimate fate of the South African Republics, and the other with that of the Empire of Korea. The interests of the British Empire are so largely concerned in each region that under no circumstances could we allow preoccupation about one of them to blind ourselves to the necessity of taking any needful precautions or warlike measures for the defence of our interests in the other. Moreover, it is well to note that our success in South Africa depends but little on the presence of any portion of the British fleet. Our formidable navy is thus left free to cope, with or without allies, against the forces of any Power that may seek to work to our disadvantage or assail our interests elsewhere in the world. The present position of affairs does not, therefore, warrant Japan's fear that 'Russia's mouse will now have a chance of playing in the absence of the English cat.'

To comprehend the Korean Question and the position of ourselves and our probable allies, the United States and Japan, in respect to it, we must take into account the following facts:-Korea is a great peninsula stretching southwards into the Pacific Ocean and dividing the Yellow Sea from the Sea of Japan. Its eastern coast throughout its length faces the islands of Japan; its western coast confronts the mainland of China Proper; and its land border is bounded by Chinese Manchuria, except for a short distance on the extreme north where it comes in contact with the Russian coastprovince of Primorsk, a province that, together with the northern part of the basin of the Amur, was ceded by China to Russia by treaty in 1860. Its coast-line, which is thus a southern extension of that of Russia, comprises some of the most magnificent natural harbours in the world, and, unlike the Russian harbours to the north, they have the advantage of being ice-free in winter, and can thus be approached and entered at all seasons of the year. Eight of these fine harbours have been opened to foreign trade, five of them since the conclusion of the Chino-Japanese War.