promptly set to work to make inquiries wherever he went with regard to the functions of Poor Law Guardians and the power they wield, with regard also to the sort of higher authorities they have. For he was bent on making himself thoroughly acquainted with our poor relief system, on seeing how it worked, and the results it yielded.

'Your poor relief system is of quite special interest,' he remarked when, having done what he wished to do, he was on the point of leaving England. He admitted, when he in his turn was plied with questions, that it was not a system that could be worked in his own country, or in any other country that he knew, except in England.

'You English seem to have a perfect genius for doing what other people cannot do,' he remarked, 'for making machinery work which no other people would ever dream of tackling. Of course you are rich, and the rich can do many things that the poor cannot do; still in this case it is not merely a question of money; although I doubt whether in any other country the ratepayers would stand aside patiently, as they do here, while their money was being spent so lavishly as it must be spent under your relief system. Why, the amount of money spent here is enormous. King's ransom, indeed! Why, you spend more on your poor every year than all the kings' ransoms ever paid. If we in our country took to spending money on the same scale, there would soon be an uproar; and what would happen to my colleagues and me I really don't know. If we wish to be left in peace, we must be able to show a good return for every penny we spend. Now here it is quite different: no one here seems to trouble very much as to what sort of a return is obtained. That comes of being rich, I suppose. Yes, your poor relief system is extremely interesting. It is very costly, of course; still . . .'

Beyond that he would not go: not one word could he be induced to say as to how the treatment of the poor in England compared with their treatment in his country; and when he was asked what he thought of the return we obtain for the money we spend on the poor, he promptly fled. Some time later, however, when he was again in his own land, he admitted frankly, in talking things over with his English ex-guide, that our whole relief system was in sore need of bettering, as it was bad alike from the humanitarian's point of view and the economist's.

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' In spite of all the money you spend on their relief, your poor as a whole are not well cared for,' he maintained. 'Your invalid poor are very well cared for; your children too are cared for very well, if not very wisely. But as for the rest! Why, the better they are the worse you treat them. In your workhouses the worthless live in comfort while the worthy live in misery. And

for that the system is to blame; it is a bad system, fundamentally bad. Under it the destitute are all on a par, whether good, bad or middling, whether respectable men and women, penniless through no fault of their own, or lazy, vicious vagabonds. They may all be housed together, all made to fare alike. Could anything be more flagrantly unjust, or more stupidly cruel? It actually penalises merit and puts a premium on vice. For to be forced to live side by side with the vicious is for a decent man a real hardship, a source of endless humiliation and suffering, while it is no hardship at all for the vicious to be forced to live side by side with a decent man-they may find it quite a pleasant change. That all-on-a-par regulation is enough in itself to vitiate the whole system. So long as it is in force, workhouse life must be intolerable for the more respectable of the inmates, no matter how much money you spend on trying to make them comfortable.

'To put all the destitute on a par is a senseless proceeding,' he continued after a long pause. 'All your workhouse methods, indeed, are senseless. Nothing could be more senseless, or more wasteful, than to manufacture paupers, seeing that, when they are manufactured, you must support them. And in your workhouses they are manufactured, must inevitably be manufactured. For they who go there are not only given board and lodging, but they are encouraged to stay. They are not allowed to go out to seek work unless they take their discharge; and even then they must go without a penny in their pockets, or even a crust of bread. For they have no chance in the workhouse of earning a few shillings wherewith to buy food while trying to make a fresh start in life; no chance of learning how to work skilfully, so as to be able to make a fresh start successfully. Thus, no matter how long they may stay, when they leave they are not a whit better able to make their own living than when they arrived. The chances are, indeed, they are less able, for they leave with the workhouse taint clinging to them; they may have fallen into the workhouse habit and have lost any wish they ever had to earn their own living. It must be very hard for even a decent, industrious man to spend a month in a workhouse without being turned into a pauper.'

Our poor relief administration found as little favour in the eyes of this foreign expert as the relief itself. To allow, as we do, the Poor Law to be administered by honorary officials, who, as they are popularly elected, have, perhaps, had neither training for nor experience in the work, is in itself a risky proceeding both for the ratepayers and the poor, according to him; while to leave these amateurs without an official chairman to guide them, without an effective higher authority, is a very dangerous proceeding, although less dangerous, perhaps, in England than

elsewhere. Still even in England such a system must entail great waste, he maintained, as the average Board of Guardians cannot know how to deal with money on a large scale, how to spend it profitably, and so obtain for it a good return. It must also entail unfair treatment for the poor, and with it the chance of great hardship. For under such a system there can be neither equality in the treatment of the poor nor yet continuity: each Board may treat the poor differently, and every Board may change its treatment after every election. To decree that all the destitute should be on a par, should therefore be treated alike, and then allow every Board of Guardians to treat them as it chooses, struck him as being quite absurdly illogical. For it meant that the poor might be treated very kindly in one village or street and harshly in the very next. And as proof of his contention he cited the case of the two workhouses he had visited, one where the poor fare very well, the other where they fare badly, although both are in the same town. That such a state of things should be possible was, he held, fraught with mischief all round.

'Railing against our poor relief system is sheer waste of time,' the ex-guide, at length, ventured to remind him. 'We all know that it is bad, very bad; but what can be done to better it? That is what we wish to learn.'

'Make a clean sweep, to begin with,' was the answer given with a growl. 'So long as you have uncontrolled Poor Law administrators, bettering is out of the question. It is not so much the fact of your Poor Law Guardians being elected, or being honorary, that makes them harmful; it is their being given a free hand. Their clerk cannot force them to act on his advice, nor can even their higher authority, the Minister, force them to do anything that they do not wish to do, unless it be not to spend money. So long as that is the state of things, there can be neither equality, nor yet continuity, in the treatment of the poor; and unless there be both, the treatment must be unjust as well as wasteful. If every Board of Guardians had as chairman, or what you like, an expert official adviser who could speak with authority, and also a central higher authority who could enforce his decrees, there might be some chance of their doing their work satisfactorily; but as it is there is none.

'Then bettering is also out of the question so long as your Poor Law decrees that a man-worse still, a woman-must be destitute before he can obtain relief,' he continued. 'Now of all enactments that is surely the most stupid. Why, under a common-sense system, the purpose for which poor relief is given is more often than not to help the poor not to become destitute, help them, if they are decent folk, to tide over evil days and thus secure them against the risk of becoming paupers. Under your

VOL. XCVIII-No. 585

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system the poor, even the respectable poor, are practically forced to become paupers, if misfortune befalls them suddenly; for you refuse to help them until they are destitute; then, if they accept what you offer them, they straightway become paupers ; and the damage is done. That destitution-test enactment must certainly go, if either your ratepayers or your poor are ever to have fair treatment. And with it must go the all-on-a-par enactment, which is equally wasteful and cruel. So long as in the eyes of the law the poor who receive relief are all on a par, any attempt to better your relief system is foredoomed. England must classify her poor, must keep each class apart from other classes, and treat those in each class, so far as possible, according to their merits, if she wishes to deal fairly either with the poor or with the ratepayers who must support them.'

Classify the poor !' the English ex-guide exclaimed in dismay. 'That is impossible, our Poor Law officials declare. It cannot be done, they say, in towns so large as ours.'

That is absurd,' the foreign expert replied impatiently. 'Even in London you classify your criminals. You don't club together murderers and petty pilferers. It is difficult work; that I know, for I have helped to do it. It needs infinite patience as well as skill; but it can be done. It has been done, indeed, and in countries where the Poor Law officials are less efficient than in England. And it must be done, for until the poor are classified they can never be treated either justly or wisely, humanely or even economically, never be treated as each one of them ought to be treated. To the worthless too much will be given, to the worthy too little; the former will live in comfort, the latter in misery. The lazy will neither be forced to work nor taught how to work, while decent men and women will be left to face disaster without a helping hand. Meanwhile the manufacturing of paupers will, of course, go on, and the ratepayers' money will be wasted.'

That was the burden of the foreign expert's preaching, although not always given quite in his own words.

EDITH SELLERS.

1925

JAPANESE NAVAL POLICY

To Englishmen the Japanese Navy has always been an object of peculiar interest. They are conscious that Japan's problem of defence is fundamentally similar to their own, adequate sea power being in either case the first condition of national security. Moreover, they recall with pride that the fleets which won renown at the Yalu and Tsushima were in large measure the products of British naval genius. Of the ships present at both actions the majority were of British construction, whilst many of the officers had studied their profession under British supervision. Generous testimony on this head was offered by Count Okuma in his History of Fifty Years, in the course of which he wrote:

We are indebted to Western experts for the inception and subsequent development of our navy, especially to the British Government for the courteous loan of a number of their capable naval officers to serve as instructors at the Cadets' College, Tokyo. The men of deeds and ability that the Imperial Navy now possesses are the direct consequence of the tuition then granted us by British officers.

The sentiments of friendship for Japan and admiration for her navy which were so pronounced in England during the period of the alliance have not by any means disappeared. Here, at least, there is no trace of an anti-Japanese spirit, nor is it easy to persuade the average Englishman that the growing military power of that Far Eastern empire is, or can ever become, a potential menace to British interests. This robust faith in the permanence of Japanese goodwill is doubtless an excellent thing, since popular sentiment is, after all, the factor that chiefly determines international relationships. But in this particular instance more confidence might be felt in the tranquillising effect of British friendship for Japan if it were general throughout the Empire, instead of being, as it is, confined to the Mother Country. To Australians, to New Zealanders, and even to Canadians, there is nothing fantastic in the idea of Japan as a future enemy. They therefore watch her military preparations with less complacency than is manifested in England. No good purpose is to be served by turning a blind eye to the cleavage that exists between British and Dominion views on this question. Since the claim of the