quite content with a substantial salary. This type gravitates to old-established institutions like banks and insurance companies which proceed mainly on the fixed salary principle; or to the national and local civil service where the salaried official lives and multiplies amazingly. But it must have struck anyone acquainted with business or city life, as well as those who have studied and criticized public finance, that profits and rewards are apt to be very unequally and very unfairly divided. There is probably as little jobbery and as little favoritism here as in any rich country; but there is a great deal too much of both. Under the joint-stock company system there is a tendency to appoint ornamental directors, who obtain considerable fees for doing practically nothing, and confide entirely in salaried managers and officials whose business qualities and values they are incompetent to gauge. It is to be feared that there are many men drawing a large income as directors of a dozen or more companies whose aggregate business services to the community cannot be compared with those of a good manager earning half the amount in treble the time by hard work and careful attention to the affairs of a single concern. On the other hand, a good director is an invaluable asset to any company. During the last twenty years, which roughly coincide with the creation of vast trusts and corporations for the capitalization of the tariff, the United States has been the great pioneer in fancy salaries. It is said, probably with truth, that the hundred-thousanddollar-a-year salaries, even including royalty, would not run into four figures for the whole world. No doubt, if ever our super-tax figures should be published for the purposes of further graduation-and this is only too likely if the present portentous growth of British armaments continues unchecked we shall learn how many British citizens possess incomes of £20,000 a year. We do not know of any fixed salary of that amount. It was thought very extraordinary when Mr. Pierpont Morgan drew a London manager from the ranks of the Treasury by offering a salary half as large. The record salary for America is stated by the New York Journal of Commerce to have been that received by Mr. John Hays Hammond from the Guggenheims when he returned to the United States after release from the gaol in which he was lodged for participation in the Jameson Raid. His reputation as a mining engineer led the Guggenheim companies to place all their operations under his charge at a salary, it is supposed, of £50,000 a year. The New York Evening Post tells us that the day of fancy salaries is past. There is "an epidemic of reductions in the financial world." The last president of the Steel Trust received $100,000, but the salary of the new president, Mr. Farrell, has been fixed at $50,000. Again, the death of Mr. Paul Morton, the president of the Equitable, who was receiving $80,000, is expected to furnish the trustees with an occasion for economy. In electing his successor, it is said, they will proceed on the theory that $50,000 will command the services of the ablest man in the business of life insurance. It is noticed that this is the amount received by Mr. Charles Peabody, president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. There are, perhaps, one or two banks and trust companies in Wall Street which pay their presidents more than £10,000, and there is one paying that salary which presents its president with a handsome bonus every year in addition. But the chief bankers and financiers of New York are also directors of other undertakings, and have many opportunities of getting rich quickly. According to the New York Evening Post, Mr. R. A. McCurdy, of of examinations, while for those who have influence or pedigree there are plenty of nice positions in the Foreign Office, the Education Office, and other departments which have managed to evade the levelling march of democracy and competition. With ordinary luck a Civil Service clerk will in a few years earn from £800 to £1,000. He will have a fine room in a huge palace that has cost half as much as a Super-Dreadnought. He will have two months' holiday a year, and if he does his duty by his department, extracting larger and larger supplies every year, he will proceed from C.B. through a long row of orders to a very high summit of distinction. But to a City magnate the best jobs in our Civil Service seem poor. What is £2,000 a year in these days of public and private luxury? Indeed, it makes us rather uneasy to think of the very small incomes of men who control and inspect contracts involving millions upon millions of the taxpayers' money. A really competent business man iu the Civil Service who can make good bargains for the nation will probably be tempted away by one of the contractors who has suffered from, and therefore appreciates, his When we turn from private business to public service we find that a much higher standard prevails in Great Britain than in the United States if we contrast the income of our King and Royal family with that of the American President, or the salaries of our Cabinet with the corresponding Ministers at Washington. On the other hand, our members of Parliament are still unpaid, while Congressmen and Senators have good salaries and perquisites. From a pecuniary point of view, the English Civil Service is very tempting to un-enterprising undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge who have discovered a talent for success in the art skill. The Economist. TURKISH AMBITIONS AND BRITISH INTERESTS. Many of us remember the old Turcophil, a type that has now disappeared from among us. Lord Salisbury's famous confession that we had backed the wrong horse sounded his deathknell. We cannot imagine his shout to-day shaking the roofs of our musichalls. He no longer, alas! is here to sing the praises of "the only gentleman left in Europe." But he has his successors, though of a very different style, and queer figures they cut in their new parts. We remember them LIVING AGE. VOL. LI. 2660 three years ago as the Balkan Committee and the friends of the Macedonian. Whether they did their clients in those days much good may reasonably be doubted, but they certainly had some excuse for their position. The foreigner naturally regarded them as he regards missionaries who are imagined to stir up difficulties in order that England may step in and get profit out of the intervention. However, it really did seem as if something were going to happen at last when the Young Turks appeared upon the scene with "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality" emblazoned on their banners and a parliament in Stamboul. Then the vindicators of the Christian races became in the twinkling of an eye the apologist of the Turk, who because he talked of liberty and had a parliament was taken at his new face value, and all serious efforts on behalf of the unfortunate Christians dropped. We gather from an article contributed by Mr. Noel Buxton to the "Nineteenth Century and After" that these simple enthusiasts are beginning to be disappointed in their protégés. He admits that in Macedonia the troops "have behaved no better than in Abdul Hamid's time." We have understood that they behave even worse. Anyway the position of the Christian subjects of the Sultan seems to be worse, for they are being forced into one Ottoman mould, which the ex-Sultan never attempted. The Christian schools are clearly worse off. The same ridiculous Ottomanism is going on there and teachers are withdrawn because they are not Turkish subjects. No public works, no real improvements are carried out for the very good reason that any spare cash there may be in the Treasury is spent on armaments. The railway bridges have to be guarded, bands of marauders are everywhere, and the prisons are crowded. On the other side of the account we have some Christians in the army, but these are given the most menial tasks to perform. There is much rebuilding in progress—“an index of confidence" naïvely remarks Mr. Buxton "not adequately reflected in the views of British residents and commercial men." We have a shrewd suspicion that the "British residents and commercial men" know a good deal better than Mr. Noel Buxton and his fellow sentimentalists what value to place on Turkish "reforms." Fanati cism, ignorance, lack of men to administer, and of money he diagnoses as the causes of failure. Even Mr. Buxton seems to recognize the absurdity of a nation in this state of barbarism claiming to be treated as a European State and to abolish capitulations and so on. Yet he tells us that "British influence in laboring actively for the development of Turkey would be serving the cause of European peace." If this is all that a well-informed apologist like Mr. Buxton can give us as the solution of the Turkish problem, we fear that the attempt to run Turkey on modern lines must be confessed a failure. Yet who that knew anything about Turkey, its history, and the character of its people ever expected anything else from the beginning? It is no satisfaction to us to be able to say "We told you so," but no prediction we made about "Young Turkey" from the first has been falsified. Turks will be Turks and not Europeans, but the natural conceit of the race has been immensely increased by the revolution and its results. As might have been anticipated, in one feature great progress has been made under the new régime. The army is immensely more formidable than it was, it is better equipped, better trained, and better paid. The virtues of the Turks are military, and their one idea of "reform" is a better army. That they are rapidly acquiring. Recently 50,000 men manoeuvred before the foreign military attachés, who pronounced them to be the equals of any European force in infantry or artillery, though the cavalry are less admirable. Ships of war also are being rapidly ordered. What hope is there with money being spent in this way that England can "labor actively for the development of Turkey"? The only labor of the kind likely to be appreciated by the Turks would be a further loan on easy terms. Even Sir Edward Grey does not seem inclined to let them raise their customs except on terms satisfactory to British interests. These anticipations are borne out by the very unpromising outlook revealed by the Turkish budget and the comments upon it by that astute financier Djavid Bey, who, by the bye, is not a Turk but a Jew by origin. According to his estimate recently laid before the Chamber there is a deficit on the year of seven million pounds (Turkish), while out of a total expenditure of 341⁄2 millions the amount spent on the army and navy is thirteen millions, getting on well towards half the total expenditure of the country. He also informed the Chamber that "the needs of the War Ministry were bound to increase annually." In addition he foreshadowed a large increase of expenditure on strategical railways, and we have already seen several suggested, for which it is hinted that French financiers will find the funds. "A strong army and sound finance would prove the revival of the Empire to all Europe." Furthermore he hopes that "the British capitalist would seek a field of activity in Turkey." In this last sentiment he cordially agrees with Mr. Buxton, though hardly as to the direction in which loans once obtained should go. This then being the existing condition of Turkey and the aims of its rulers as admitted by foreign admirers and Turkish ministers, the rest of the world must naturally begin to consider with some care in what position they are likely to find themselves placed by the revival of Turkish power and ambition. It is certain that at the present time Turkey desires no quarrel with us; on the other hand she finds much more profit accruing to herself from a friendly Germany. The sentimental attachment to this country at one time alleged was the hope that we might prove the champions and finan cial supporters of the new régime, as we were fifty years ago of the old. It must also be remembered that after the second revolution the political dreamers who looked to English and French models gave place to the purely military factions who have ever since dominated the scene. The programme of this party-the only party ever likely. to have any real power so long as Turkey exists-is clear from their action. It is the Ottomanizing of all the subjects of the Porte, the extension of Ottoman power, and, as a more remote object, the recovery of lost provinces. One of the most significant moves on the part of Turkey at the present time. is her aggression in Persia. While France and England have been denounced by Young Turks for interfering with Persian independence, Turkey herself has been occupying and administering in the north of Persia territory that is undoubtedly Persian. This process, begun under Abdul Hamid, has been carried on under the present régime, for schools have been established and the garrison strengthened at Urmiah. Meanwhile missionaries of the Sunnite persuasion preach to the Persians the desirability of a Turkish Protectorate, the virtues of Germany, and the wickedness of Russia and England. This propaganda is said to be meeting with wide acceptance in Persia; in any case it is a sign of the gradual drawing together of Islam. But the Indian Mohammedans have, we believe, little affection for the Young Turks, though they had a great reverence for Abdul Hamid. The Persian ambitions of Turkey at present, it is true, threaten Russia more than ourselves. When, however, the Bagdad railway is completed with some or all of the other strategical lines now contemplated, the outlook may become serious. A Turkish army highly efficient, as it may then be, which could be rap idly conveyed to and concentrated on the Egyptian position and the shores of the Persian Gulf, even if not backed up by Germany, might gravely imperil our interests. But we still hold our trump card, money, and that for the completion of Turkish plans is absolutely necessary and can in the end only be obtained on reasonable terms, if at all, from France and Great Britain. Not a franc or a shilling, therefore, should pass into Turkish pockets save The Saturday Review. under conditions which prevent it being used against British interests and after a satisfactory settlement of difficulties in which Turkey and ourselves may be involved. This will not be effected by sentimental vaporings about "liberty" and "parliamentary government," but by hard bargaining conducted by determined men who know their own minds and the character of the people with whom they are dealing. LITTLE PLAYS FOR AMATEURS. IV. "THE LOST HEIRESS." The Scene is laid outside a village inn in that county of curious dialects, Loamshire. The inn is easily indioated by a round table bearing two mugs of liquid, while a fallen log emphasizes the rural nature of the scene. Gaffer Jarge and Gaffer Willyum are seated at the table, surrounded by a fringe of whisker, Jarge being slightly more of a gaffer than Willyum. Jarge (who missed his dinner through nervousness and has been ordered to sustain himself with soup as he puts down the steaming mug). Eh, bor, but this be rare beer. So it be. Willyum (who had too much dinner and is now draining his sanatogen). You be right, Gaffer Jarge. Her be main rare beer. (He feels up his sleeve, but thinking better of it wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.) Main rare bee, zo her be. (Gagging)) Zure-lie. Jarge. Did I ever tell 'ee, bor, about t' new squoire o' these parts-him wot cum hum yesterday from furren lands? Gaffer Henry wor a-telling me. Willyum (privately bored). Thee didst tell 'un, lad, sartain sure thee didst. And Gaffer Henry, he didst tell 'un too. But tell 'un again. It du me good to hear 'un, zo it du. Zure-lie. Jarge. A rackun it be a main queer tale, queerer nor any them writing chaps tell about. It wor like this. (Dropping into English, in his hurry to get his long speech over before he forgets it.) The old Squire had a daughter who disappeared when she was three weeks old, eighteen years ago. It was always thought she was stolen by somebody, and the Squire would have it that she was still alive. When he died a year ago he left the estate and all his money to a distant cousin in Australia, with the condition that if he did not discover the missing baby within twelve months everything was to go to the hospitals. (Remembering his smock and whiskers with a start.) And here du be the last day, zo it be, and t' Squoire's daughter, her ain't found. Willyum (puffing at a new and empty clay pipe. Zure-lie. (Jarge, a trifle jealous of Willyum's gag, pulls out a similar pipe, but smokes it with the bowl upside down to show his independence.) T Squire's darter (Jarge frowns), her bain't (Jarge wishes he had thought of "bain't")-her bain't found. (There is a dramatic pause, only broken by the prompter.) Her ud be little Rachel's age now, bor? Jarge (reflectively). Ay, ay. A main |