Punch.

Amid the scenes of splendor unparalleled even in the Imperial city of Delhi itself, the great day of the Durbar has come and gone. In conformity with the immemorial usage of the East, various boons and remissions of penalties were announced to the people. Grants of half-month's pay were made to all soldiers, sailors, and subodinate civil servants. Certain criminal prisoners and small debtors were released. Officers and men of the native army were made eligible for the Victoria Cross, an honor to which the Indian soldier has long aspired. Popular education is to be aided by a small gift of £300,000, and similar grants are promised for the future. But all these subsidiary marks of favor are thrown into the background by a master stroke of high policy which involves vast changes in administrative organization.

The capital of India is to be removed from Calcutta to Delhi, and following on this the Bengali Provinces are to be reunited, Assam will revert to its earlier position as a Chief Commissionership, and a new Province is to be created by uniting the districts of Behar, Chota Nagpur, and Orissa under à Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

As an appeal to Indian imagination alone no better policy could have been followed than the reversion to Delhi as capital. "Not only," to follow the words of the Secretary of State for India, "do the ancient walls of Delhi enshrine an Imperial tradition comparable with that of Constantinople, or with that of Rome itself, but the near neighborhood of the existing city formed the theatre for some most notable scenes in the old-time drama of Hindu history, celebrated in the vast treasure

house of national epic verse. To the races of India, for whom the legends and records of the past are charged with so intense a meaning, this resumption by the paramount Power of the seat of venerable Empire should at once enforce the continuity and promise the permanency of British sovereign rule over the length and breadth of the country." If criticism is to be made, it should be directed against a tendency towards Imperial centralization, which might possibly be promoted by this move of the Viceroy's seat to Delhi.

But, important as the change may be in its appeal to the traditional instincts of India, it is also dictated by more direct motives of policy. Calcutta became the capital of India through a seemingly fortuitous course of events. Those chance causes have now disappeared, and the unfortunate remoteness of its situation has become increasingly apparent. Moreover, as the capital also of one of the chief Provincial Governments, it has become too much associated in the eyes of the rest of India with a purely provincial policy. "Events in Bengal," says the explanatory dispatch from the Indian Government, "are apt to react on the Viceroy and Government of India, to whom the responsibility for them is often wrongly attributed. The con

nection is bad for the Government of India, bad for the Bengal Government, and unfair to the other Provinces, whose representatives view with great and increasing jealousy the predominance of Bengal. Further, public opinion in Calcutta is by no means the same as that which obtains elsewhere in India." Calcutta is a vast mart of commerce, and there is no fear that it will suffer much from the loss of a few officials. A great trade can well spare a little pomp.

Delhi, on the other hand, is already a city with imperial as opposed to pro

vincial traditions behind it. At Calcutta the Government was surrounded almost entirely by Bengali influence. In Delhi it will be in contact with far more varied types of Indian peoplesSikhs, Hindoos, Mohammedans, and other lesser races being all represented in the surrounding country. Not only so, but its geographical situation is more central than that of any other Indian city that could have been chosen for the same honor. On the borders of the Punjab, it is almost touched by Rajputana and the United Provinces. It is within easy reach of Central India and the North-West frontier, equidistant from Bengal and Bombay, and in close touch with the Central Native States. Moreover, some of the money squandered on the Durbar camp will be saved, and if the work is honestly carried out, the Government may almost be able to recoup itself for the cost of new buildings in the enhanced. values of the 25 square miles of land which it is said to have acquired. hope there will be no building scandals or land swindles, and that the palaces built for clerks will not be all marble and gold.

We

Bengal loses the Imperial capital, but, on the other hand, the province is once more restored to a united whole. Lord Curzon's policy, a policy which has caused deep and continuous illfeeling since its introduction, is definitely reversed. The partition is frankly acknowledged to have been a mistake. In the words of the dispatch: "It was deeply resented by the Bengalis In the Legislative Councils of both the provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal the Bengalis find themselves in a minority, being outnumbered in the one by Beharis and Uriyas, and in the other by the Mohammedans of Eastern Bengal and the inhabitants of Assam. a substantial grievance.

.

This is

The

bitterness of feeling will become more

he Gleaners"

only its name

t's well-known n sends to Juhe cousin's huse his back ache. Deen a very diffi-narrow, peevish, the picture and her set her at once to gher roads of life. aising her washerees on to hire a maid ires a youthful author, it into the suburbs for until he writes a play t in the House" type captures New York and e story is told with Fleming H. Revell

.mor.

lusha Anderson, who was of the old University of Chifor twelve years Professor in has written out in a form,

alf-fiction, half-memoirs, the impressions of his youth in a village community that used to be "far West although it was East of Lake Erie." It is a lovable, gossipy book and though it is supposed to centre around a pair of sturdy young lovers, "When Neighbors were Neighbors" really deals far more with the neighborly quality of "the Folks" than it does with any sprouting love that ends in marriage. It is all here, the Church and the minister, the Millerite excitement, the schools, taverns and temperance, bucolic doctors-and a dozen other things which made the slow old village life so charming, so kindly, so closely-knit, in comparison with the hurly-burly of our modern living. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

Ida M. Tarbell's "The Tariff in Our Times" (The Macmillan Co.) is a caustic review of tariff legislation and attempted tariff legislation during the past fifty years. The author has made a thorough study of her subject; and her knowledge of the several schedules most in dispute and the history of their making surpasses that of most of the members of Congress who have been instrumental in enacting them. Miss Tarbell writes fearlessly and with keen irony; and even those who do not agree with her conclusions or regard her as a trustworthy historian can hardly fail to be diverted by the force and clearness with which she frames her indictment against excessive protection. The volume is brought down to the enactment of the existing tariff; and, in view of the importance which the tariff question is certain to assume in the present session of Congress and in the pending Presidential election the publication of the book is particularly timely.

The Baker & Taylor Co. publishes a new edition of Lucian J. Fosdick's "The French Blood in America,"-a

and more acute. We feel bound to admit that the Bengalis are laboring under a sense of real injustice, which we believe it would be sound policy to remove without further delay. "History teaches us," says the Secretary for State, in reply, "that it has sometimes been found necessary to ignore local sentiment or to override racial prejudice in the interest of sound administration, or in order to establish an ethical or political principle.” But he goes on to add that whenever the opportunity occurs these assumptions of force should be retracted. are hopeful enough to believe that generous confessions of error, backed by actions, constitute the highest wisdom in politics. And while the grievances of the Bengalis are removed, at the same time substantial justice is done to the other elements of the NorthEastern provinces. The Hindu-speak

The Economist.

We

ing population, "hitherto unequally yoked with the Bengali," are now to be included in a separate province based on a culture and language distinct from that of Bengal. Assam is brought back once more under a Chief-Commissionership on the grounds that the country is still insufficiently developed for its latest form of Government. "Events also of the past twelve months," says this candid report, "on the frontiers of Assam and Burma have clearly shown the necessity of having the North-East frontier, like the North-West frontier, more directly under the Government of India, and removed from that of the local Government." The interests of the Mohammedans are safeguarded by the representation they enjoy in the Legislative Councils, and Moslem sentiment is appeased by the removal of the capital to the Mohammedan City of Delhi.

Norman H. Pitman's story of "Chinese Playmates" (L. C. Page & Co.) is a unique addition to child literature, in that it is an attempt to follow the games and diversions of two Chinese children and is illustrated by a dozen or more full-page pictures by a Chinese artist, Sen Fah Shang. Small boy and girl readers will find the effect quite realistic.

The latest addition to the "Little Cousin Series" of L. C. Page & Co. is one of the most charming,-"Barbora, Our Little Bohemian Cousin" by Clara Vostrovsky Winlow. The separate volumes of this series aim to present in stories of child-life the essential characteristics of the various elements which enter into our complex national

ity. The account given in the present volume is especially pleasing,—the althor, if one may guess from her name, being moved by racial sympathy and understanding.

"Tom Strong, Washington's Scout" by Alfred Bishop Mason, (Henry Holt & Co.) is a spirited story for boys, the boy hero of which shares the fortunes of the revolutionary army from the defeat at Brooklyn to the victory at Yorktown. The story is true to history and the great characters of that period, from Washington down, figure in it. The fortunate boy reader into whose hands the book falls will find himself beguiled by the interest of the personal narrative, while at the same time a vivid impression of historic scenes and char