taken in hand by the secular princes. In Avignon the Pope personally saw to it that the Jews were not molested. The poor people of that city were literally provided for by the fruits of his bounty. Physicians afforded such succour and relief as was possible amongst them, and the salaries of these doctors were paid by the Pope himself. Thanks to his eager, boundless generosity, Avignon was probably better served with medical attendance than any other city in Europe. An estimate of the effects of the Black Death would involve a consideration of the whole of European history from the middle of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century. It is evident that even the tremendous revolution which the Renaissance effected in the world of thought, even the joint impulses of the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America, even the political upheavals which accompanied and, to some extent, enslaved the Reformation-even these phenomena are totally inadequate to account for the completeness with which mediaval civilisation collapsed. If that collapse is minimised, or if an attempt is made to insist that between the years 1350 and 1600 Europe was rising proudly from triumph to triumph rather than sinking dismally into abysses of pride and self-interest, then the history of the mediaval times becomes totally unintelligible, a tissue of contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes. If a lowwater mark is to be postulated, it must be placed probably during the first half of the eighteenth century and not in the years immediately preceding the revolt of Luther. The Reformation, using the term in its widest and most comprehensive sense, was really inaugurated by the pestilence of the Black Death; and the peasants' wars of 1381 were the first concrete indication of the tremendous disintegration that had already been effected. Only very gradually are the Protestant nations of Europe coming to realise something of the grandeur of the Middle Ages; only very gradually are they becoming conscious that the age of St. Thomas, St. Francis, St. Dominic, Dante, Roger Bacon, Innocent III. and Giotto, the age of the Gothic cathedrals and the age of troubadours and meistersingers, represented, in every department of human activity, a pinnacle of attainment which subsequent ages have not yet approached within measurable distance. A. L. MAYCOCK. The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake to return unaccepted MSS. By THE RIGHT HON. RAMSAY MacDONALD, M.P. 465 Poland and Dantzig: the Case of Poland. By LUDWIK EHRLICH (Director of the Institute of Law, John Kazimir University, Lwow) 476 The Danish Solution of the Poor Relief Problem A Plea for a Revision of the Revised Version Spiritual or Divine Healing By EDITH SELLERS 485 By L. F. EASTERBROOK 496 By T. KERR RITCHIE 505 By CORNELIA SORABJI 514 By THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP WELLDON 524 The Vivisection of Dogs: a Rejoinder to Mr. Stephen Paget A Crime of the Middle Ages: the Suppression of the Red Cross Knights By LILIAN M. SHORTT 608 Correspondence: The Egyptian Question: a Reply to Lieut.-Colonel P. G. LONDON CONSTABLE & CO. LTD., ORANGE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE, W.C.2 PARIS: MESSAGERIES HACHETTE, 111, Rue Reaumur. Registered for Canadian Magazine Post. NEW YORK: LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION CO. All rights reserved. PRICE THREE SHILLINGS FATE is a whimsical thing. Amongst the crowd of men who attended International Conferences a quarter of a century ago were two mostly silent-one forced into a dim light because he led his small national delegation, the other overshadowed by the giants of his country. Who could have foreseen that in the presence of the more bustling and influential figures one of those obscure men would be thrice chosen as Premier of his country and become a powerful personality in European affairs, and that the other, as President of a then unborn German Republic, would successfully oppose his sturdy bulk of body and mind to the angry and destructive tides flowing both from left and right; that both would die together, and that on their death Europe would feel as though something massive and secure had been taken from its foundations? But such was the part that these two unobtruding VOL. XCVII-No. 578 465 II men had to play, and when we passed them in the assembly halls or tried awkwardly to exchange opinions with them in the cafés, no prophecy regarding them would have been more grotesque than what was to be the truth. They were types of human solidity-massive, slow but certain, quiet in their power, making no haste and having no anxiety to meet their destiny, but ready when the time came to accept the event and do their duty. If you noticed Branting in the street and thought of him at all, you would have put him down as someone successful in something that you could not fixprobably literature or science; you had to see his eye before you could conclude that his success lay where men grapple daily with affairs and command them. Even when you saw Ebert in the great rooms of the palace of the German Chancellors, or walked with him on the lawns under stately trees behind it, though his natural dignity was impressive and his reserve gave confidence, he remained the self-respecting workman perfectly capable of using the authority of his office but not embodying it in himself. These men carried no sceptres in their hands. The life-histories of the two men show the different social strata from which Socialism finds its recruits. Branting was born and brought up in the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of the home of the director of the Stockholm High School of Gymnastics. He studied mathematics and astronomy at Upsala, and his first work was at the Stockholm Observatory. Ebert was the son of a hard-up tailor of Heidelberg, left school at fourteen to be taught the craft of a saddler, tramped the country as a journeyman, and sometimes had to beg for charity. The intellect of the one and the experiences of the other brought them to the same work and creed, and enlisted them in the most wonderful of movements since that of the Christian faith to which it is so near akin-Socialism. When in 1885, at the age of twenty-five, Branting took up his pen to fight for Socialism, the movement had just been started by a crippled tailor who had come across the works of Karl Marx. The trade union organisations of Sweden were still Liberal in politics and fought for an extended franchise, and in industry were occupied with demands to improve labour conditions in this detail or in that. Sweden had no very long history of trade unionism, the working population was comparatively small; the division of interest between employer and employed was, however, well marked. Thus, contrary to what happened here, the industrial organisation of the labourers had not grown to manhood before the political labour movement became strong, and, with only the slightest opposition on the part of some ironworkers, the Swedish trade unionists under the influence of |