Mr. Lloyd George speaks for England as well as Wales when he

says:

"I oppose this Education Act, not because it was passed by a Conservative government, but because it transgresses the essential principles of my conscientious beliefs. Had it been passed by a Liberal ministry, I would have opposed it in the same way. If the Liberal leaders agree to any compromise which continues this injustice, I shall fight them as unflinchingly as we now fight the present government. I will be no party to, will never consent to, any arrangement which will necessitate the application of the civil power of the State to the compulsory herding together of the children of the State under the sectarian teaching of the priest.”

The force we are fighting, then, is not primarily political. Parliament is only its tool. It is ecclesiastical. "Clericalism is the enemy." The reversal of the broader and more just educational policy initiated in 1870, and the return to the clericalism of the beginning of the last century is due to the change which has taken place in the Anglican Church, in its ideas and spirit, its temper and aims. It is not the tolerant and inclusive church of the days of Lord Shaftesbury; but the bigoted and persecuting church of the times of Laud and Whitgift. It is a Romanized church; and in and by the English Church Union it is becoming increasingly Romanist. It is that section, the large and dominating section of twentieth-century Anglicanism, that has given us these Acts. It passed seven Resolutions on Education in Convocation: six of them were incorporated in the Bill, adopted by the Cabinet, and passed by a majority that was returned solely to end the South-African War. It is the victory of the High Church party; many of the Low-Churchmen are against it, and the Broad Church party would never have introduced it, as is evident from the sturdy resistance of the Bishop of Hereford.

No! it is the offspring of the Roman theory, and another illustration of the truth of the words of Mr. Gladstone: "Individual servitude, however abject, will not satisfy the party now dominant in the Latin Church. The State must also be a slave." In fact, this fight is a battle of principles that, like fire and water, are in eternal collision. It is no war of this Church and that, of Bishop and priest with minister and deacon, of Churchmen and Dissenters. The real conflict is between ideas and the systems they create for their embodiment. On both sides, the men are honest and sincere, true and devoted; but the collision is far deeper than

the men, though the warfare proceeds through the men, and by the men; they are but the visible garniture of the ideas. The collision is in the constitutive and regulative ideas of the English Church on the one side, and the structural forces and conditions of developing English life on the other. Regal ideas-ideas that mould the character and fix the action of man, as an individual, and as a citizen, and as a Churchman, challenge each other to combat; they have done so through the long course of our educational experiments and compromises, traditions and customs, failures and successes, and they repeat the challenge with fiercest intensity just now. They consist of (1) deeply opposed interpretations of religion; what it is and how it is mediated to the souls of men: (2) different conceptions of education; where it begins, whether in the administration of a rite or in the gentle uplift of the spirit of the child on the wings of human love and character towards truth and goodness; and how it is advanced, whether by the machinery of dogma or by quickening to self-activity: (3) contrary and contradictory ideas of Christian ministry, whether it is priestly, intolerant and exclusive, or catholic and free: and, (4) dominating all, totally opposed notions of the functions and province of the State in relation to religious societies, whether Parliament ought, or ought not, to take in hand the teaching of theological creeds, or the patronage, control and financial support of one such society, or of several, or of all. These are the forces in conflict; and on these matters, the English Church has been, and is, at war, not with the Free Churches merely, but with the mass of the English people outside all churches, and with the Colonies of our great Empire, and also with the advancing life of the world.

The path of duty is clear and plain; we must offer a patient and invincible antagonism to these statutes; we can do no other. We seek the total separation of churches, as churches, and clerics, as clerics, from all State education, elementary, secondary and university. The functions of Church and State must be kept apart, in control, in cost and in every way. Let the churches do their own work at their own cost and as they will: and the citizens do theirs in their way and at their cost and without the interference of the Churches. That is the one and only way to educational efficiency, social harmony and national progress. JOHN CLIFFORD.

THE PANAMA CANAL-SOME OBJECTIONS TO

A SEA-LEVEL PROJECT.

BY BRIGADIER-GENERAL PETER O. HAINS, U.S.A.

UNTIL within a few months, it was generally supposed that it had been definitely decided that the canal to be built at Panama to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was to be a canal with locks. Recently, the discussion of the sea-level project has been revived and the desirability of carrying out the project of a canal with locks questioned. Under the circumstances, it will not be out of place to offer a few reasons why this is not good policy.

No one would think of questioning the great merits of a sealevel canal over one with locks, and yet there is considerable misunderstanding in respect to what a sea-level canal at Panama would be. To the ordinary man, a sea-level canal is one through which vessels may pass without obstruction of any kind. It is generally understood to be an open cut with no locks, like the Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, or the St. Clair Canal connecting Lake Huron with Lake St. Clair. The construction of such a sea-level canal at Panama is not feasible.

At Panama, the south end of the canal, the rise and fall of tide is about 20 feet. At Colon, the other end, the rise and fall is only about one foot; the mean level of the two oceans being precisely the same. The level of the ocean at Panama, therefore, is 10 feet higher at high tide and 10 feet lower at low tide than it is at Colon, and this is the case twice every day. The currents, therefore, in such a sea-level canal would, for most of the time, be so swift that large ships could not be handled with safety. The only way of obviating the difficulties arising from these conditions is to provide a tide-lock. The mean level may then be maintained between the lock and the Atlantic Ocean, and the level on the Pacific side may be allowed to fluctuate 10 feet above

and 10 feet below. The difference, therefore, between a sea-level canal and a lock canal at Panama is, that the former requires one lock and the latter requires several.

A canal with only one lock is, of course, better than one with several, but how much better? Is it worth $100,000,000 more and ten years delay? If the canal is to benefit the country as greatly as is sometimes claimed, many hundred millions more would be lost because of delay alone. The canal should be opened to navigation at the earliest time practicable. Unnecessary delay will be a misfortune. A delay of ten years will be a calamity.

Suppose some of the prophets fall short in their estimate of the value of the canal. Many people think it will not pay as an investment. It certainly is not probable that it will pay in the first few years after it is open to navigation. Canals do not, as a rule, pay at first. It takes time to establish new lines of traffic. The Suez Canal did not pay at first; and there is every reason to believe that the Panama Canal will follow the ordinary rule.

The construction of a lock canal at Panama will not prevent its ultimate conversion into a sea-level canal should the future demands of commerce require that; while the additional cost, due to the extra cost of excavation, while the canal is in use, can be borne so much better after it shall have been demonstrated that a sea-level canal is necessary. The canal is chiefly for the benefit of future generations. Why not put part of the burden of cost upon them? Why spend $100,000,000 now and delay construction ten years when, possibly, nay probably, a sea-level canal will never be required? The passage of a ship through one lock is only in degree less objectionable than its passage through five.

The fear seems to be that, as ships are growing larger and larger, it will only be a comparatively short time when they will be too large to pass through locks that to-day would be quite large enough. It is true that the size of ships has increased with great rapidity in the last few years, and it may be that the limit has not yet been reached. But the locks can be increased in size and the canal otherwise enlarged when the demands of commerce require it. The locks should, of course, be built in duplicate, and when it is found that they are too small, if it ever should be, one at a time could be enlarged or new ones built to take their place. That is the history of all lock canals. At first, for economical reasons, the locks are built to accommodate

the commerce of the day, or what may be reasonably anticipated in the near future. Afterward, when the growth in the size of vessels demands it, new and larger ones are added. The argument against a lock canal is not applicable at Panama, for the reason that it can never be a canal without locks. It must have tide-locks.

The difficulties of passing ships through locks are much exaggerated. All ships have to be docked for repairs, and to dock a ship is a much more difficult operation than to pass one through a lock. With care, there need be no difficulty in locking a ship through a canal. The Manchester Canal is a ship-canal with locks. Its commerce is steadily growing. The Soo Canal is a canal with locks. The commerce passing through it annually is something enormous. The Kanawha River has been made navigable in its low stages by building locks and dams, converting it practically into a lock canal. The Ohio and other rivers in the United States are being treated in the same way.

It has been estimated that the water-supply of the Chagres River is sufficient for a traffic of 40,000,000 tons annually, over three times the tonnage that now passes through the Suez Canal and 10,000,000 tons more than was passed through the Soo Canal during the past year. Who can tell that the tonnage through the Panama Canal will ever reach such figures? When it does, the question of cost of conversion will be of secondary importance.

It is confidently believed that a sea-level canal at Panama will never become necessary, that a canal with locks will furnish all the facilities for vessels of the largest tonnage and greatest draft that will ever come into use; but in view of the uncertain possibilities of future commercial conditions, the canal may be built with a view to its ultimate conversion, if the necessity should ever arise. This can be done without increasing the first cost. In fact, the first cost may be somewhat reduced. Retaining walls in the Culebra Cut were recommended by the Isthmian Canal Commission; but, if the canal be built with a view to its possible conversion into a sea-level canal, these walls should be omitted, as they would interfere with that conversion. The cost of these masonry walls was estimated at about $9,000,000. Their necessity was not fully demonstrated, but in the interests of safety from caving slopes it was thought best to build them. The saving