over, what words can express personality? And personality, in literature as in everything else, is the secret of greatness. There are writers of infinite cleverness whose every sentence is vitiated by some defect of personality. And no self-realisation can cure that any more than it can cure a physical defect. A man's work, bad or good, is a faithful reflection of his character-which does not primarily depend on the badness or goodness of his work. And in everything Conrad writes there is genuineness and distinction. He is always himself. This mind coming to us from a distant civilisation has opened out a new world before our gaze. But the world, new as it be, is only strange upon the surface, for this Polish intelligence is deeply tinged with Western ideals. In that dualism lies one of the grave difficulties in just estimation of Conrad. To explain his work as that of a Slav is excessively misleading. His influences are cosmopolitan, but the abiding passion is English. He belongs to us not simply by adoption bud, so to say, by natural selection. And the sea is the chief bond of union. Conrad has been called the novelist of the sea-a phrase too glib to be of much value, but true to this extent that the sea and ships are the only inanimate things which have really kindled his imagination. For, first and last, it is the human relationship which absorbs Conrad. Everything else is subsidiary. His curiosity about mankind is endless. But in the earlier books the forces of nature have a kind of mesmeric hold upon the lives of his people, upon the sombre and secret motives of their being, which we do not find in the later books. The breath of dawn in the forest, the tumult of tempestuous seas, the glittering night of the tropics-they are not simply a background, they are a power. But in the later works even the background has faded. They are concerned with more intricate, less direct, psychological problems. They, too, are atmospheric, but it is a sort of spiritual as opposed to a physical atmosphere.

It is an important question, this one of Conrad's atmosphere. Reality being his aim, it is to attain it that he is at such trouble to build up a convincing scene. He prepares elaborately the way for his characters, and even when they are on the stage he throws around them still another atmosphere the double-distilled essence of their own personality. The danger of this method is quite plain. In his resolute efforts to convince he tends to put the story itself further and further back. He must assure us of reality before beginning. And nature to him is merely an artistic convenience to this end, all nature, that is to say, except the sea. The sea may be introduced for that purpose-often is, indeed-but it is not the only purpose it is introduced for. Conrad can write of the sea with no ulterior

thought, with no intention save to describe it for its own sake. It inspires in him emotions of fealty and passionate remembrance -the sort of nostalgia men experience in thinking of their old homes.

And besides these two influences, the sea and the interplay of personality, there is one other thing which Conrad takes very seriously, and that is his art. He is the most determined and conscientious of artists. He knows exactly the effects he wishes to produce, the subtle palimpsests of tone, the balance and rhythm of sentences. The flavour of his work tastes smooth as the flavour of old wine. And his genius is of a kind to regard equally the negative and the positive aims of art. He marshals his forces, subordinating everything to the general plan. And within his ordered scheme he is for ever making points almost too elusive to be grasped. Indeed, to track Conrad's artistic steps is a revelation. Each of his books, as we have said, is an experiment-and, we may add, a progressive experiment. With Conrad one step leads out of another. They are not sporadic. They give criticism a chance. And the result is visible at once in reading, say, Almayer's Folly and Victory, his earliest novel and his latest. Not, indeed, that developments are necessarily improvements. It is as easy to drop the gold as the dross. New experiments are not always successful, and even when they are they are not invariably steps in advance. No need to flog that dead fallacy of progress! But, as a conscious artist, there can be no doubt that Conrad's work does show, on the whole, a continuous and valuable development. The process of toning down and of economising language is very apparent. Richness of imagination may have. suffered in consequence, but an exquisite precision and significance has been attained. The superfluous idea, the superfluous word, hardly exist any longer. In the suppressed preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus," that preface written for The New Review in 1897, lately revived in America, but still almost unknown in England, Conrad has clearly stated his ideals as an artist. It will be profitable to quote the opening sentences here, and if the expression of them seems a little florid, one must remember that they belong to his earliest, most expansive period.

"A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential-their one illuminating and convincing quality-the very truth of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the

truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the world, the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts-whence, presently emerging, they make their appeal to those qualities of our being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. They speak authoritatively to our common-sense, to our intelligence, to our desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism-but always to our credulity. And their words are heard with reverence, for their concern is with weighty matters; with the cultivation cf our minds and the proper care of our bodies; with the attainment of our ambitions; with the perfection of the means, and the glorification of our precious aims.

"It is otherwise with the artist.

"Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle, the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to cur less obvious capacities; to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities-like the vulnerable body within a steel armour. His appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring -and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures for ever. The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisitionand, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation-and to the subtle but invisible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity—the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."

And with these words, so moving and so sincere, we may close our essay, in the assurance that Conrad has carried his high ideals to high accomplishment, and that the triumph of a great reputation is already his. It is a pleasing and legitimate fancy to see in the title of Victory a fortunate coincidence. For after twenty years of a laborious life the victory remains with him, and his work, iong unnoticed by the world, has proved at last its own unquestioned and splendid justification.

RICHARD CURLE.

ITALY IN THE CLUTCHES OF GERMANY.1

BEHOLD Italy in her right place among the great nations-those who deserve to rank as such-in the battle for our threatened civilisation! Without vaingloriousness, we may say that Italy brings the Allies help worth having. Ancient Rome descends into the arena with her well-tempered sword and her calm, resolute soul. The plot hatched by Giolitti and Bülow was perilous to Italy, but when all is said and done it also proved providential, for the outburst of popular indignation which banished these contemptible conspirators from Rome revealed that the ancient will of the Latin people had come to life again and in Rome's critical hour could make its voice heard above that of the cumbersome and useless intermediary into which political representative bodies may at times degenerate. The revolt against the machinations of Giolitti and Bülow was a fierce one, and its triumph was only assured by the perfect harmony existing between the King and his people. This battle was, however, by no means the hardest of the internal conflicts which neutral Italy had to fight. It was a far more difficult task to induce the Italian people to regard Germany not merely as the cruel oppressor of Belgium, and as the treacherous and cold-blooded instigator of a war devoid of ideals and waged by her with unexampled ferocity, but also as the deadly enemy of Italy. In order to realise the truth of this assertion, which even now is hardly understood in England, we must consider the origin and nature of Italian independence. Austria is Italy's hereditary foe. Our martyrs have perished on Austrian gallows and in Austrian dungeons in their struggle against the Hapsburgs and their rule. In the forty years which have passed since the union of Italy, the sighs and appeals for help of the dying Italian soul of Trent and Trieste have never ceased to reach our ears from our eastern frontier. The beautiful names of the cities which once formed the diadem of Venice are becoming daily more and more closely associated with blood and

(1) This article is written by a leading Italian journalist who has, perhaps, done more than anyone to arouse his countrymen to the " 'German peril" and whose book Belgia sotto la Spada tedesca is one of the best on German treachery and atrocities in Belgium which have appeared in any language. Despite his English name, derived from his great-grandfather, he is thoroughly Italian, a fact which adds to the weight of his work, as much of it was done when Italy was still neutral, and may therefore be regarded as the testimony of an impartial, though friendly observer.

agony. Such were the voices which reached us from Austria, and our people hardened their hearts against Austria and kept alight the sacred torch of faith in the future.

But what was the voice of Germany? A nation such as ours, into whose ears it had been constantly dinned that foreign politics concerned no one but the Government, naturally regarded Germany as a great allied nation which provided our working men with well-paid employment and taught them lessons of discipline ; a nation whose sovereign was passionately attached to our fair land, where he spent part of nearly every year, behaving perhaps a little too much like the master of the house in the opinion of the Venetians, but also playing the part of a somewhat officious friend, laden with gifts, which were indeed tasteless, but testified to his good intentions.

Moreover, when certain of Italy's political necessities (carefully fostered by Bismarckian perfidy) had brought about serious illfeeling between Italy and France, French money, so indispensable to Italy, who was just then taking her first willing but faltering steps in the field of industry, was promptly replaced by German capital, to which Crispi, perturbed by the "French peril," had turned for aid, since he saw "no salvation except in defending ourselves nearer home, within our own walls, even if by having recourse to foreign money."

German capital, which asked nothing better, came, and with it came German financiers, who saw that Italy, like France, was a country much given to saving, and that all that was needed was the advent of bold men with modern views who would attract these savings and utilise them in accordance with German banking and industrial methods.

It was in this way that German banks and companies made their first appearance in Italy, and the people of Italy were ingenuous enough to feel pleased and flattered that a great nation like Germany should regard Italy as a field for important enterprises, since the Germans were the acknowledged masters of the world in such matters.

Further, we must bear in mind that the Italians drew a sharp distinction between the German-speaking people of Austria and those of Germany proper, forgetting that to a great extent they had co-operated in the work of cruelty and oppression during the Risorgimento. They continued to regard Austria as the enemy of to-morrow-for the Alliance deceived no one-and Germany as the powerful and indispensable friend of to-day, whom the Latin traditions of good faith, hospitality, and geniality called upon them to welcome with open arms into their homes and to make free of their purses. And so it came about. I trust I have now