is like pale-blue satin, and there is a flash of sunlight from every bayonet. Then I mount guard at the Porte d'Italie, where the sappers and miners are at work on the ramparts raising a cloud of gilded dust with every stroke of the pick-axe. It is very hot, and the bronze of the old-fashioned field pieces lying about amid the parched herbage of the slope, reflects the burning sunshine. The old familiar buildings were relieved against the same background of implacable blue on the afternoon of the 4th of September, when, enraged by the news of the capitulation at Sedan, men with ropes round their waists, or clinging to tall ladders, tore down the imperial eagles and escutcheons. It was beautiful, beautiful weather still, that day when I saw on the Chaussée du Maine the miserable refugees from Châtillon with their képis on hind-side before and placards with the word "Coward" fastened to their backs, dragged along by the infuriated populace. One especially haunting memory is that of the suburbans who took refuge in the city just before it was invested. They came sadly in by the wide, magnificent boulevards-the streets lined with monuments. I have never in my life been so cut to the heart as by the flight of these unfortunate exiles through the luxurious town, bathed in the splendor of an autumn sunset. A bright serenity was in the air; the white house-fronts took on a faint rose tint from the sinking orb; the gilded lettering of the signs fairly flamed. But amid all this fair display the long line of carts came on, down the middle of the hard, macadamized street. Some few were drawn by a staggering and half-starved horse, but for the most part the draught beast was a man,-a poor, bent man, with a sunken chest and a strap round either arm-pit, pulling with all his might, his head drooping, his hair fallen over his eyes. His wife pushed behind, and every child carried a bundle of some sort. The remnant of humble household goods was knocked rudely about in the jolting cart. A cage with some hens in it trembled on the top of a rolled-up mattress. An ancient table sprawled with its four legs in the air, and all the kitchen utensils rattled and shivered. What misery! What rags and ruin! We ask ourselves with sinking hearts where these forlorn emigrants will find an asylum;-where the children will sleep; and the disappearing sun smiles mockingly. He is a dilettante! The grotesque caravans that thread the street are no concern of his. He is minding his own business and amusing himself in the sky. He sets a ruby in the midst of every blazing window-pane; and after him comes that yet finer artist, the twilight, diffusing over the pale, unseasonable blossoms of the city trees a wonderful tint of purple,-turning the white chestnut flowers rose pink. Meanwhile the investment of Paris is being methodically and scientifically completed. The tranquil Moltke wipes his spectacles and gives his orders; and the heavy-hipped Germans aim at us the steel mouths of the Krupp guns. The king of Prussia rides across the Place d'Armes at Versailles, heedless of the imperious gesture of Girardon's Louis XIV., and in his lodging in the Rue des Reservoirs, Bismarck, in high content, sees the prestige of France floating away on the smoke of his pipe. Out upon thee, autumn sunshine, who callest up the image of that man, who never smiled save upon our conquerors! Yet once thou gavest us a ray of hope! Never didst thou shine more brilliantly than on the Bastille and the Place de la Concorde, when four hundred thousand of us were drawn up under arms. Beleaguered Paris-a waste of stone-could scarce furnish a flower to stick in our gun-barrels. Yet we were all ready on that day to fight and to die; and our general, with his black moustaches and his pale, impassioned face, galloped past, acknowledging by a gallant wave of his gilded helmet our wild cries of "Vive la France!" Our enthusiasm was vain. Nobody knew what to do with so much loyalty and good-will! It was glorious weather. Come on, scum of the Parisian streets, disguised as soldiers! Mount guard on the ramparts! Rat-a-plan, plan-plan, plan! And the "Marseillaise!" And the drinking-bouts, where your ardor will evaporate and you will talk politics till you are completely stultified! And the magnificent autumn will slip away, and you will get used to regarding the war as an open-air perform Les Annales. ance, rather amusing, on the whole,in which you take part at thirty sous a day! So it will go on, till of a sudden winter will come with freezing nights, and tramping through the mud,-and-starvation. How well one might have fought in the October sunshine! But now, stifled with fog, scourged with snow,-one can only gape at treason! All is lost! When the final crash comes there will be nobody left in Paris but fevered and exasperated citizens ripe for civil war! You torment me, cruel sun! You recall only sinister dates-disasters which have never been repaired, insults which have never been avenged. 'Twas but yesterday the lagging dogstar quite prostrated the army of our autumn memories,-that army of which nothing is now required save reviews and parades! Veil yourself in mist! We are vexed and ashamed. A cloudy sky would better suit our melancholy humor! François Coppée. IN NOVEMBER. Scant light have we today,-the pale slant rays Whence are the warblers flown whose silenced lays And fly before us in a shy amaze. The sheaves are garnered,-ruddy fruits and sweet C. D. THE ANGLO-GERMAN AGREEMENT. A recess full of serious preoccupations has been brightened by the game of speculation which has raged fast and furious round that dame voilée of Downing Street-the Anglo-German Agreement. In the smoking-room of the St. James's Club, diplomatists assured one another mysteriously that something important was in the wind as far back as the middle of August. Later on, in the dining-room at the Travellers', they collated the growing irregularity of Mr. Eric Barrington's dinner hour with the daily and protracted visits of Count Hatzfeldt to the Foreign Office, and became more than ever convinced that serious business was brewing. What was it? Actual guesses were few, for the scope of conjecture was limited by a professional knowledge of the possibilities, or rather the impossibilities, of the political situation. Outside, however, was a public which was hampered by no such limitation. On its behalf, the Pall Mall Gazette took a hand in the game at the beginning of last month by declaring, on the authority of "a source in which we have every confidence," that the mysterious agreement was nothing less than "an offensive and defensive alliance." The chargé d'affaires of a Great Power who caught sight of the contents bill of the temerarious newspaper as he was hurrying to catch the Pullman express to Brighton on that sensational afternoon, still bewails to his friends that, in his anxiety to pierce the mystery, he forgot to ask the bawling camelot for change of the half-crown he threw to him. understanding as to spheres of railway influence in China, the details of which he elaborately set forth. Others who modestly abstained from advertising their veracity, announced, in turn, a compact to abolish the mixed Tribunals in Egypt, an arrangement as to German territorial acquisitions in Asia Minor, and a bargain with regard to Delagoa Bay. Some said that the Delagoa Bay agreement involved the occupation of the whole province of Lourenço Marques by England, while others limited it to the purchase of the railway by Mr. Cecil Rhodes. Then we heard of a settlement of the question of the Hinterland of the Gold Coast and Togo; of a combination between Mr. Cecil Rhodes and a syndicate of Hamburg bankers to exploit Damaraland; of the purchase of Mozambique and a coaling station at Lisbon, together with the hire of a Portuguese army by Great Britain, for a trifle of £80,000,000; of the abandonment of German opposition to a British lease of a strip of territory on the Eastern frontier of the Congo Free State uniting Uganda with Nyassaland, and finally of a treaty by which Germany recognized a British protectorate on the Nile, and yielded to this country a free hand in Africa, south of the Zambesi, in return for a coaling station at or near Delagoa Bay and a British guarantee of the Treaty of Frankfort. Not one of these guesses bore the test of a close scrutiny. The "offensive and defensive alliance" theory was clearly an inference from Mr. Chamberlain's "long spoon" speech, and nothing more. It was a plausible suggestion at a time when the struggle with Russia over the Niuchwang Rail Thenceforth every day brought its crop of guesses. An "absolutely trustworthy authority" declared that the main point of the agreement was an way Extension Loan seemed to bear daily testimony to the wisdom of the Colonial Secretary's new Foreign Policy. Such an alliance, however, could only be against Russia, and no one who knew anything of the international situation believed for a moment that Germany was disposed to enter a combination of that kind. Of the other theories some were transparently absurd, some were too simple to account for the number and Iength of the interviews between Count Hatzfeldt and Mr. Balfour, and others dealt with questions in which Portugal, and not Germany, was primarily interested. Nevertheless, one of these conjectures has managed to survive, and today most people are satisfied that, in some way or other, the agreement is concerned with a transference of Delagoa Bay to England. It is true that this theory is open to many of the objections which have proved fatal to its competitors. If Great Britain likes to purchase Delagoa Bay she has a double treaty right to do so, and need not ask Germany's permission. If, for some occult reason, she has chosen to conciliate susceptibilities in the matter, the operation is not one which requires prolonged negotiations. Moreover, the latter hypothesis still leaves the public in the dark as to German compensations, and hence affords no explanation of the agreement as such. On the other hand, the theory is fathered by the German semi-official press, and, with Herr Busch's revelations of how those organs are managed fresh in our minds, we cannot well afford to pooh-pooh what they say. Now, from all this discussion three facts detach themselves very clearly. In the first place, the agreement can have nothing to do with a change of British foreign policy on the "long spoon" principle, for not only is the Emperor of Germany anxious to main tain cordial relations with Russia, but our own difficulties with that Power are disappearing before negotiations which promise a permanent and mutually satisfactory settlement of the Far Eastern question. In the second place, it is clear that the transaction between the two Powers is of exceptional magnitude, complexity and urgency, for it can be for no small or negligeable question that Ministers and Ambassadors confer for hours together, day after day, at the Foreign Office, at a time of year usually devoted to holiday-making. The third fact is the statement of the German Press with regard to Delagoa Bay. I have just pointed out that this statement does not satisfactorily account for the exceptional features of the negotiations to which it relates. If, however, we treat it as a mere glimpse of the negotiations, a clue to the general nature of the agreement arrived at, our difficulty will at once vanish. Thus, if we read "Portuguese African Colonies" for "Delagoa Bay," everything is explained. In that case we have a problem which, in magnitude, complexity, and urgency, exactly accords with the external features of the negotiations which have so aroused public curiosity. Guesses, like prophecies, are best when they are based on actual knowledge. I am afraid I must confess that I owe my inference as to the nature of the Anglo-German negotiations less to any ratiocinating process than to what the police call "information received." The new Anglo-German Agreement is, in fact, an arrangement resulting from certain negotiations with Portugal, by which the two Great Powers divide between them a right of pre-emption in regard to all the Portuguese colonies in Africa. It defines the territorial sphere of each of the two contracting Powers in those colonies, provides for the consideration to be paid as and when the colonies are alienated by Portugal, assesses the proportions of the purchase money or leasehold premiums for which each of the Powers will be liable, and settles a multitude of minor questions connected with the eventual transfers. In short, Great Britain and Germany have become joint heirs to the estates of the Portuguese crown in Africa, and, while undertaking the reversion in common, they have prudently provided against any clashing of interests when the time arrives for entering upon and dividing their heritage. The circumstances which have led to this important transaction will be readily divined by any one who has followed, however slightly, the recent political history of Portugal. That country is, to all intents and purposes, in a state of hopeless bankruptcy. Year after year her finances show a deficit which neither economy nor repudiation can diminish. Since her default in the matter of two-thirds of the interest on her external debt, she has found the European money market closed against her. Such is the distrust with which she is regarded that she was actually unable a little time ago to float a supplemental issue of bonds of the Tobacco Loan-which is the only loan on which full interest is still paid-although she protested that the operation was for the benefit of her bondholders. Every attempt to effect an arrangement with her creditors has failed. Meanwhile, taxation is mounting up in the country, trade is languishing, and discontent is everywhere rampant. If the country is to be saved from a ruinous economic and political crisis, steps must be speedily taken to place its finances on a sound basis. How is this to be effected? It is too late to try a régime of cheeseparing economy, even if the Lusitanian administration were capable of such a thing, for to starve the public services I would be quite as disastrous as to further increase taxation. Portugal requires two things-a fresh supply of capital with which to re-establish her credit and put her house in order, and a permanent reduction in her annual expenditure which would enable her to keep straight in the future. It has long been clear to every student of this problem that there is only one way in which these needs can be adequately satisfied. Portugal must realize some of her assets, preferentially those which are costly luxuries to her. Among such assets her colonies occupy a prominent place. The majority of them involve the Motherland in a heavy annual expenditure, which, together with the cost of the Central Colonial Administration in Lisbon and the naval charges connected with it, go far towards accounting for the deficit in the national budget. Hence their alienation either by sale or lease would help very considerably to balance the budget, and as a high price could be easily obtained for any of them, such an alienation would at the same time provide the country with the fresh capital it so urgently needs. Unfortunately the Portuguese have rather more than their fair share of the Jingo spirit-which is, perhaps, explained by the fact that eighty per cent. of the population are illiterates -and they are especially tetchy on the question of parting with their colonies. The Republicans foment this feeling to serve their own ends, so that, on more than one occasion, seditious demonstrations have been produced by the bare rumor that the Government was meditating the sale of some oversea possession of the Crown. Nevertheless the inevitability of some such transaction has of late years impressed itself more and more on the minds of Portuguese statesmen, es |