come from Europe and not from the United States. Lastly, and this is the most important argument of the subsidy advocate, the national defence requires the rehabilitation of the merchant marine. However powerful the navy may be in point of battleships, it is useless without colliers, transports, scouts, despatch vessels, etc. Is it not poor economy, the subsidy advocates ask, for the Government to build these auxiliary vessels and maintain them in idleness when, by suitable encouragement, private capital may be induced to build them under conditions which will make them easily convertible into war-vessels at slight expense, and available for the use of the Government upon the outbreak of war? If they are neither constructed by the Government for the use of the navy, nor liable to impressment from the merchant marine, the Government will be compelled to depend upon purchases in the foreign market. The impolicy of this was shown at the outbreak of the war with Spain in 1898. The Government was compelled to hunt the seas for transports and colliers, and, after considerable anxiety and delay, it succeeded in purchasing or chartering some forty ships from foreign nations, The American vessels liable to impressment under the mail subsidy act were taken over by the navy without delay, but the number was inconsiderable. One line, which is a beneficiary of the mail subsidy to the extent of $200,000 per year, furnished the government with nine vessels and 500 seamen.

Besides furnishing the navy with auxiliary vessels, the merchant marine serves as a nursery of seamen. Whether built at home or purchased abroad upon emergency, war-vessels must be manned by experienced and trained seamen. Unlike volunteers for the army, they cannot be drawn from the farm, the shop or the mine by proclamation. The weakness of the United States in this respect is well known. More than half of the seamen who sail under the American flag are foreigners, and only about sixty per cent. of those who owe allegiance to the flag are native-born.

To recapitulate, then, the grounds relied upon by the advocates of subsidies are the extension of American commerce, the saving of freights on the foreign trade, an enlargement of the opportunities for American capital and labor and the security of the national defence. Largely as a result of the protective tariff system, this country leads all others in manufacturing and in the quantity and value of its exports; while, mainly through neglect or

unwise legislation, it stands near the foot of maritime nations. It is time to inquire whether the party of protection is not guilty of gross inconsistency when it maintains the protective system as regards manufacturing, but permits free trade in navigation; when it protects the American factory-owner, but denies the same protection to the American shipyard by permitting the foreign ship to compete on equal terms with the American vessel in the transportation of American products; and when it makes it possible for the American steel trust to furnish the English ship-builder with ship-building material at one-third less than the price the American has to pay. It now seems clear that Americans can no longer build and operate ships profitably, under the existing laws, in competition with foreigners. It lies within the power of Congress to change these conditions to a large extent. The relief need not be in the form of subsidies or bounties. The removal of the tariff on ship-building material, the abolition of the restrictions with regard to the employment of seamen, possibly the freedom of purchase in foreign yards, certainly discriminating duties or tonnage dues, are some of the remedies short of direct grants from the Treasury. The subsidy scheme is too objectionable-in the popular mind, at any rateto make its adoption a permanent feature of American policy; and, besides, there are practical difficulties in the way of its equitable administration. The hearings of the Merchant Marine Commission show that there are still some who question the constitutionality of such legislation. In these days, however, when at one session Congress votes half a million dollars to exterminate an insect in one of the States, and sets aside $750,000,000 for the irrigation of arid lands in certain other States, and at another makes an outright gift of $5,000,000 to an Exposition Company; when it votes $60,000,000 at one session to improve rivers and harbors; and when it grants bounties on the production of sugar and on the taking of fish, it is hardly likely that its right to appropriate money for the upbuilding of the merchant marine, with a view to extending American commerce and securing the national defence, will be seriously questioned on constitutional grounds.

JAMES W. GARNER.

LANCELOT, GUINEVERE AND ARTHUR.

BY JULIA MAGRUDER.

A RECENT writer, in contemptuous vein, has said: "To some men and to all women, the marriage ceremony is marriage.”

And, surely, this contempt is justified; for what reasoning human being could hold or defend such a definition of marriage? Yet, in a recent re-reading of the "Idylls of the King," the writer has been forced to the admission that our most Christian poet, Tennyson, accepted the definition of marriage here ascribed to the weaker sex and the weaker members of the stronger sex!

When we stop to think of it, or, rather, if we stop to think of it, which few do, it immediately becomes clear that the marriage ceremony is only a small part of the bond-the mere outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual state. Like the coronation of a king, it only declares to the world a fact which already exists. If the man were not a king already, the putting on of the crown could not make him one. So, also, if the bond and agreement between a man and woman have not constituted a marriage, the ceremony-be it civil or religious-is powerless to do so, in any sense beyond the legal form, designed to operate for the good of the state, in the legitimizing of children and the inheritance of property.

Every reasonable being must concur in this estimate of marriage and repudiate any other. Yet Tennyson, in the two Idylls, "Lancelot and Elaine" and "Guinevere," has drawn a picture which, if it means anything in the way of ethical teaching, means that, in marriage, the letter is everything-the spirit nothing; that the form is the essential part, and the sentiment the nonessential.

No one could deny to Tennyson the possession of mental integrity; but, in this instance, has it not played him a trick? No

one doubts that, when he wrote so eloquently the story of the three beings, through whom came both the glory and the downfall of that high exposition of chivalry and Christian graces known as "The Round Table," he was unconscious of any disloyalty to truth's standard. We, therefore, willingly concede the point that Tennyson was honest, in his day and generation.

But in the years that have elapsed since these Idylls were written, the world has moved onward; and, although we cannot say that it has been always in the direction of spiritual progress, what we do maintain is that an honest prose statement of the character and conduct of the three individuals referred to, leads to the conclusion that, had Tennyson written these famous poems in even the first years of the twentieth century, that quality of integrity of mind of which we have spoken must have constrained him to a different presentation of the narrative of the lives of Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur-a presentation such as the more intelligent part of the reading public of to-day might find rational and acceptable.

In considering the passages which describe the meetings of Lancelot and Guinevere, and of Arthur and Guinevere, and the consequences which resulted therefrom, one is constrained to • wonder how the poet's conclusions, drawn from these premises, have passed unchallenged so long.

To this the only answer seems to be that Tennyson, although he wrote, it may be, for all times, wrote according to the influences of the time in which he lived.

Would any creditable writer of to-day venture, in common, up-to-date prose, to hold up the circumstances and conduct of these two men and this woman for such an allotment of praise and blame as was meted out to each by Tennyson?

Let us state the case in its simplest terms: Here we have three people-Arthur, the perfect King, conceded to be without spot or blemish or any such thing, holding up to his Knights, by precept and example, the highest possible standard of living; Guinevere, young, beautiful, innocent, made for the love and worship of men; and Lancelot, bravest, most powerful, and also most courteous and gentle of Knights.

Guinevere, having been “given in marriage" to Arthur, whom she had never seen, has no other thought in her mind but to be a true and loving wife to him. Lancelot, the King's emissary, to

bring his bride to him, has no thought but loyal obedience to the service of his liege lord, and loyal honor and respect to the lady henceforth to be his Queen. Before the royal pair have even met, Guinevere has felt within her the stirrings of the strong primitive attraction which reveals love to her in such an aspect as she had not hitherto conceived of. Lancelot, older and less unconscious, feels the same stirrings of his heart toward Guinevere, and sees in her the one woman. For there is nothing to contradict-indeed, there is everything to support-the idea that the love of Guinevere for Lancelot and the love of Lancelot for Guinevere were, both ideally and actually, the supreme loves, of both their lives. Between them stands her obligation to Arthur, as her King and husband, and his obligation to Arthur as his liege lord and sovereign-obligations stronger in those days, even, than in these.

Guinevere, compelled by the exigencies of the situation, marries Arthur, with the image of Lancelot filling her mind, as the love for him fills her heart; and Lancelot looks on at the marriage, feeling his hitherto untainted loyalty to the King clouded by a forbidden jealousy.

Time passes. Lancelot, the "peerless Knight," the "flower of bravery," equally brave and tender, equally loving and daring, shows continually before the Queen such qualities of mind and graces of spirit, such deeds of prowess and of valor, as furnish a reasonable and honorable foundation for the sentiment already kindled in her heart. Add to this the fact that Arthur bored her --which is simply the prose translation of the following words:

"That passionless perfection, my good lord”—
"He is all fault who has no fault at all "—

"A moral child, without the craft to rule;"

and consider also that her name was continually joined to that of Lancelot ("Lancelot, the flower of bravery, Guinevere, the pearl of beauty"), and any one who wonders that "the trouble grew and stirred" must be without the power of logical deduction.

So far-as, perhaps, all will agree-no only the inevitable that had happened. will say " it should have stopped there." will not challenge that conclusion.

harm was done. It was "But "-the moralists Perhaps it should. We