THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPÆDIA. SINCE Solomon undertook the building of the Temple nearly 3,000 years ago, there have been few enterprises undertaken in the history of the Jewish race as important as the publication of "The Jewish Cyclopædia," which a Christian firm, Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls, of New York and London, have undertaken to produce. The first volume of this monumental book is now lying before us. It will be completed in twelve volumes. It is difficult to know whether to admire more the enterprise of the publishers or the industry of the editors and the immense staff which they have employed in order to make this encyclopedia a monument more lasting than brass or stone of the race which may claim in some respects to have been a veritable Christ among the nations. Νο Christian pen can ever adequately describe the indebtedness of Christendom to the Jew, nor can any Christian pen make adequate atonement for the age-long martyrdom to which this nationality has been subjected. Disraeli's aphorism that one half of Christendom worships a Jewess and the other half worships a Jew, reminds us of the fact continually forgotten by those who seem to have assumed the name of Christ in order to bring discredit upon the memory of their Founder, that the religion of Christendom is in its essential fundamental elements the religion of Judaism. All that is best and noblest which has struggled for expression in the long series of prophecies of Hebrew seers found its supreme expression in the life and teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth. The Jews deny that He was incarnate God; they cannot deny that He was the incarnation and the soul of their

race.

The production of this cyclopædia is a tardy tribute to the part which the Jews have played in the religious education of the world. I heartily congratulate the great American publishing firm which has undertaken the production of such a work on so imposing a scale.

It is said that they have sunk £120,000, or £10,000 a volume, in the preparation of the work. I can well believe it, and I rejoice to know that enterprise so splendid has been met with recognition so prompt. Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls have not only made the world their debtors by the courage with which they undertook the task, but humanity has for once recognised its debt promptly, and is paying back the capital with interest.

The original idea of the production of such a work must be credited to a Viennese Jew, Dr. Isidore Singer, who after wandering to and fro between Vienna, Berlin and Paris, ultimately gravitated to New York, to discover in the New World men with sufficient insight and understanding to recognise the possibility of placing the production of such a cyclopædia upon a sound business footing. It is odd to learn that Dr. Singer before going to America to lay the foundation of this great work, published a little paper in Paris called La Vraie Parole, in reply to Drumont's La Libre Parole. In his journalistic work in Paris he probably displayed as much energy as he subsequently consecrated to the production of the cyclopædia; but how great is the difference in the result! No sooner did he find a capital public ready and willing to give expression to his great idea than he succeeded in rallying round him all the best minds of Contemporary Judaism, and placing under contribution all the resources of ownership available in the Old World or the New.

For three years Dr. Singer has been busily engaged with the collaboration of a large staff in preparing the groundwork of the encyclopædia. When completed, the

encyclopædia will comprise 12 volumes, of about 8,000 pages, containing 2,000 illustrations, many of which will be richly coloured. More than four hundred European and American scholars are engaged in the work, and it is published under the direction of an editorial board of leading American, Jewish, and Christian scholars and Hebraists. In addition to this editorial board, there is to be an American board of consulting editors, representative of all phases of Jewish thought and practice, and a foreign board of consulting editors composed of recognised authorities on Jewish law in the Old World. In the publishers' announcements of the completion of the first volume, Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls have excelled themselves in the skill with which they have set forth the whole details of their design and the method in which they are carrying it out. One ingenious method which they have adopted deserves notice. By a series of facsimiles of manuscripts and proofs, they show the stages through which a piece of copy passes in one of the minor articles, not occupying more than a page in the encyclopædia. It begins with Dr. Kayserling's original manuscript, "America, the Discovery of," contributed by Dr. Cyrus Adler's department. The next is the translation of this page of manuscript into English; then we have the first revise, showing critical revision, and a second revise showing the insertion of corrections suggested by a critical reader; then we have a third revise, showing paragraphs and box-heads, and a fourth revise, showing the corrections made by the editor before it was made up into page 4. Then we have the first page proof, showing the insertion of an illustration, and then finally we have the cast page proof, when it is ready for the press.

The

Another interesting feature of this preliminary publisher's notice is that we have a portrait of all the lady stenographers employed in the work. book embraces everything that relates to Judaism, from the creation of Adam down to the opening of the Jewish temple in Chicago. It is published at £17 8s. per set, in cloth, or 295. per volume. Jews will be proud of it, but it will probably be more useful to Christians, for the ignorance of the latter concerning Jews and Judaism is denser than that of the Jews.

INDEX TO PERIODICALS, 1900.*

THE present volume of the " Annual Index to Periodicals," covering the year 1900, makes the eleventh volume of the series, and the set of "Annual Indexes" now published covers the last decade of British and American periodical literature of the Nineteenth Century.

The scope of the Index has too often been explained to require repetition here. It need only be said that the present volume, which deals with the past year, presents a classified index to the contents of over 190 British and American Periodicals, as against 117 in Vol. 1., 1890, so remarkable has been the increase in the number of periodicals in the last few years. The result is a corresponding increase in the size of the Index, which has grown to over three times the size of the first volume. Yet the Index to Periodicals takes no account of any but quarterly and monthly publications. Weeklies and dailies are still untouched. For the daily papers, the Times Index, so far as the dates of events are concerned, probably does duty.

In many senses the value of an article in a review is infinitely greater than that of the newspaper article.

* "Index to Periodicals, rooo." REVIEW OF REVIEWS Office. 155. net.

The portion of these maps which is coloured black denotes the occupation of the British. Map 1 in September, 1900; Map 2 in May, 1901.

From "Peace or War in South Africa."]

Yet the contributions to the reviews, valuable as they are, would soon be forgotten, or get buried, so far as purposes of research are concerned, but for the general index to their contents, which not only classifies the articles, but makes reference to them easy and sure.

The mine from which collections for volumes may be drawn is simply inexhaustible, while the opinions offered on some subjects would be shown to be as diverse as those on religious questions.

In conclusion, I again have pleasure in commending the Index to the notice of writers, students, and others, as a reference-book of immense value to all who would be up-to-date with their knowledge, especially of current history.

PEACE OR WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.*

THIS is the fourth edition of Mr. Methuen's invaluable pamphlet. Mr. Methuen is a Conservative who until his year was only known as the publisher of other men's ritings. In this pamphlet he has suddenly disclosed imself as a political writer and thinker of the first rank. Perhaps much meditation upon the American War with Edmund Burke's works ever open before him has sensibly affected his style as it has undoubtedly moulded is conclusions. But whatever the cause may be, the act is that we have in Mr. Methuen a writer whose arnestness, whose gravity, whose eloquence, and whose erspicacity of judgment remind us of Burke at every turn. is a comforting and consolatory thought that England ay have other such men at present disguised as pubhers, stockbrokers, linendrapers, or even as Cabinet inisters who, when the occasion arises, may prove emselves capable of handling in a spirit of true statesanship the crises of the day. Six months ago who had er heard of Mr. Methuen as an author, let alone as a atesman? But to-day who is there who is not reading ; little book?

Mr. Methuen writes "neither as a Conservative nor as Liberal, but as an Englishman who believes that the time s come when all reasonable and moderate men should empt to save their country from the costly humiliations it await her if our Ministers pursue their present path." one thing he is sure. "If the Government is allowed follow its policy of mingled drift and violence : result will be disaster." Mr. Methuen makes a rvellously ingenious and effective use of the analogy re is between the war which cost us the American lonies and the war which is losing us South Africa. e of the most suggestive features of his book is the trast which he draws between our effective occupation November, 1900, and our effective occupation in May, 1. The white region in each of these maps represents territory abandoned to the Boers, it may be added r devastating it as Louis the Fourteenth's generals astated the Palatinate.

The fourth edition has been carefully revised and rected. It contains as an appendix the gist of Miss bhouse's report. The book should lie on the tables of who write or speak on the subject of the day.

"Peace or War in South Africa." By A. M. S. Methuen. Fourth ion, 1s. 270 pp. Methuen and Co.

METHODS OF BARBARISM:*

LAST month I published the sixth of a series of pamphlets in which I have done what I could to put on record the protest of those Englishmen who are true to the nobler traditions of their country, and who have not hesitated at each critical stage in the long struggle to dare to speak for the fallen and the weak. It collects and publishes the facts which justify the indictment brought by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman against the "Methods of Barbarism" employed by our Government in South Africa. In some respects it is perhaps the most appalling of all the pamphlets which I have published, for it sets forth with chapter and verse the evidence which proves that our Government has deliberately trampled under foot the International Rules of War, to which they solemnly pledged themselves at the Hague. 'War is war," says Mr. Brodrick, and therefore the negation of law; and it is well to cite the famous saying which Plutarch puts into the mouth of the Roman General Camillus, when he indignantly repelled the suggestion of a base caitiff that he should endeavour to reduce the spirits of the enemy by torturing the prisoners and maltreating non-combatants. Alas, we have no Camillus in Africa, but no lack it would seem of "thievish slaves and mongrel curs," both there and nearer home.

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"Now when Camillus heard this he became red in the face, and very wroth, and stamped, and he said, looking around at the valiant Roman gentry that were captains that stood about him

"How say you, sirs? Of a surety war is war, an evil thing; but among brave men there is a law in war like a law in peace. A noble general must surely procure victory of his own manhood and marrow by the Romans' arts, and not by practice upon those whom we spare even in the bloody sack of cities. What think you of this cunning fellow's crafty counsel? I pray you, sirs, is it the part of a gentleman and a soldier ?

"And all the captains cried out: 'It is the part of a thievish slave and a mongrel cur!'"

It must never be forgotten that if private property is to be destroyed in war on the ground of necessity, the verdict of civilisation, as recorded at the Hague, is that it should never be destroyed without full payment being made therefor. Looting was absolutely forbidden, and even the public property of the State had never to be destroyed. As our armies have been doing nothing else for six months past beyond looting and burning and destroying private property, it may be imagined what opinion prevails throughout Europe as to the method in which we conduct war. It remains to be seen whether Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman will stand to his guns. It is not enough merely to denounce these atrocities as "methods of barbarism." The impeachment should be pushed home. It is, however, vain to hope for any effective action from the present paralysed Opposition. There is no hope of any effective appeal excepting from the other signatories of the Hague Convention, and in this pamphlet I venture to state the case for intervention, an intervention which would be abundantly justified on the ground that the rules of war agreed to jointly have been grossly violated by one of the signatories.

"Methods of Barbarism; a Case for Intervention." By W. T. Stead. (London: REVIEW OF REVIEWs Office, July, 1901.) Price 6d.

THIS

HIS is the holiday month, so everywhere the chords which are sounded are in.the same key. We have again been able to arrange for exchange of homes between several French and English people, and hope as time passes we may be able to do more in the same way. It is of course infinitely more difficult to arrange an exchange of homes than an exchange of letters; therefore those who wish to make a foreign sojourn should write quite early in the year, so as to give time for all the negotiations. A little while ago four people in France and four in England were enquiring, but unluckily no two of the four would make a pair. Age, circumstances, or geographical position forbad. Of course, correspondents often arrange without our intervention, and where both sides are prepared to take difficulties in a good-tempered fashion, all goes well. A young Englishman told me a merry story of his sojourn in a remote French country district. Life was very primitive; the country was parcelled out between small farmers; shops there were none; and in the farmhouse the old-fashioned box-bed still obtained, and the best bedroom was also the state reception room. This, by the way, was given to our friend, who received every kind of honour. His host came to the station to fetch him, and though the cart had no springs he declared he did not feel tired; all was so new and interesting, and, as for language, everybody told him everything, and he picked up more French terms in a week than he would have learnt in a year otherwise; but that visit will be a source of laughter for ever and a day. One exchange we arranged was a great success, and the French girl wrote, "I will never forget my visit to B—. I had no idea the house would be so lovely and everyone so kind. I doubt if Miss S will have been so content with my home; but she has one advantage. You know here, we talk, talk, all the day long, while you English are such a silent folk so I am quite sure my friend knows more French than I do English." As a result of another exchange, not one, but several members of each family have paid visits at different times.

HONORARY CLERKS.

From time to time complaints have come to hand expressed in this fashion: "It is very hard upon us English clerks that so many foreigners come over hereyoung men quite willing to work without pay in order to gain experience and command of the language--whilst we find it impossible to do such a thing abroad." I wrote to several notable members of the London Chamber of Commerce inquiring if anything could be done for such young men. But the replies were all in the negative. It is now proposed by the Journal Concordia, which is international in the truest sense of the word, that a Bureau should be opened for the "Voluntariat Commerciale," and I here give an English version of the conditions.

"Concordia will act as intermediary between firms engaged in trade and young people who desire the experience which may be gained by voluntary (i.e. unpaid) labour.

"We will, on the one hand, compile a register of firms, receiving their demands and publishing them in our Revue. On the other hand, we will arrange a list of young people wishing for such unpaid posts; these we will also publish together with the conditions.

'We appeal to all interested persons for help in the

compilation of such lists, and above all to our local groups everywhere-begging them to appoint one or two of their members in every locality to collect and forward names. "We class the firms in three categories

I. Ordinary business houses using but one language. II. Those firms which are in touch with business houses in another country, and therefore need two languages. III. Firms doing business in many countries and using several languages.

"There is a second classification, to wit-(a.) Agricultural produce, wine, oil, corn, etc.; (b.) Manufactures, cloth, paper, furniture, etc.; (c.) Literature, fine arts, music; (d.) Finance, such as banks, assurance, etc. This second classification is of great importance.

"Every applicant for an honorary post must give full information. (I.) As to his moral character and physical strength; (II.) Social position; (III.) Business require

ments.

"This information is not for publication. The references will be sent to a suitable firm, and returned to the office of Concordia if the application is not entertained by the firm in question.

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Every applicant must enclose one franc as registration fee. (This must be a foreign P.O. order, not an inland one, and only copies of testimonials should be sent.)"

Address, M. Lombard, Concordia, 77, Rue DenfertRochereau, Paris.

M. Lombard is cheerfully undertaking a great labour and a great responsibility. We shall, of course, be very glad to forward to him any information sent to us, both as regards employers and employés. I have mentioned the plan to one or two people, and am told that it is very doubtful whether English lads would care to work simply for the sake of gaining experience, or whether English parents would be willing to spare the cost of maintenance for, say six months, after a lad has left school. I do not see why English parents should be more backward than fathers over the sea. It is simply a question of utility. One thing is certain-it will not pay to lag behind, and I am told that it is becoming more and more the custom for foreigners to come and spend some time in a business house here before going in for their army service.

NOTICES.

I often receive complaints of insufficient postage. It must be remembered that the English post office accepts a half-ounce for 2 d., but the foreign weights, being slightly different, a full half-ounce should not be sent, as both in France and Germany the accepted weight is a little less than that. Possibly, too, letters are sometimes hastily sent off, and only the inland stamps affixed.

Do our readers know that the Practical Teacher offers a monthly prize of a guinea for the best translation of a short English paragraph? The translations are returned corrected upon certain conditions.

Many Indian students ask for English correspondents, and a lad in Barbadoes would like to exchange letters with someone of his own age (18).

Comrades All can be obtained for 8d.

As the Revue Universitaire is not issued in August and September, intending correspondents may have to wait for addresses.

Adult applicants are asked to send a shilling, and particulars as to age, circumstances, etc.

An Italian lady, a teacher, would be very grateful for a holiday engagement.