The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-28
oNDON. September

oNef' there is fair prospect that we shall recover our reason, and seriously begin to count the cost of our new emperial policy. the ways Into which we have been led, only within the last few years. by Brummagen states men, sensationalist journalists. and men In the street. The new creed has proved an expensive one; 1t hardly seems to have conduced to the maintenance of the com mercial position that we occupied before we adopted it; and it has never even been defended by arguments beyond mere phrases, and cursing every one as a traitor not prepared to bend the knee to the phrasemongers. The fundamental idea of Birmingham imperialism was to create zollverein embracing the United Kingdom and all our colonies and de- pendencies Neither we nor they are pre- pared to accept this scheme, and It's ad- vocates no longer urge 1t. The colonies will probably gain by it, but they assert that without import duties they could not raise the revenue that they require. We should lose, for their exports consist al- most entirely of food supplies and raw material, and a rise in their cost to us would involve rise in our selling price. This would not be made up to us by sell l ing more of our goods to our colonies, for l what we should gain by this we should more than lose by a reduction in our 1 sales to foreign countries owing to the l increased price of the goods we exported l to them. The proposal for a Zollverein has now been reduced to one by which We and our colonies would mutually give i a preferential tariff to each other To i this, however, there are the same objee- l tions, with the further one that we should have to put on duties upon our imports at large in order to take them off in the case of those from our colonies The i quacks who advocate either project are | fond of scoffing at political economy as a bundle of mere theories. It's laws, how ever are based on hard practical facts, on which alone the real prosperity of a commercial and manufacturing nation can with safety be built up.
 As result of the Boer war we are en- l deavoring to get all the light we can on I the question of military education, and heaven knows we need 1t. Dr. Miller Macguire, who is supposed to be an au- thority anent it, discussed in a recent lec- l ture, the old story about Wellington's al- legged dictum upon the relation of the l playing-fields of Eton to the battle of l Waterloo. In the first place he denied that the Duke of Wellington ever said such a thing. and challenged any one l to prove 1t. In the next he showed that | if the Duke ever said such a thing 1t was nonsense. The Duke himself was taken | away from Eton by his mother at the age of fifteen, and sent to a school at Brus- l sels, whence he entered the army at the 1 age of eighteen. Of twenty prominent officers who served under him. nearly all came from private schools and tutors, many entered the army quite early in | their teens and not one came from Eton or other prominent public schools. FL nally, the non-commissioned officers and privates who, as Wellington would have been the first to admit had as much to do with the winning of the battle as him self or any of his officers, were necessa- | rily ignorant of Eton or any other school playing-fields. It is just as well to bear l these facts in mind before accepting, on the supposed authority of Wellington, the dogma that devotion to cricket and foot ball is the most valuable element in an officers education.
 
 The question of a proper bathing dress for men continues to occupy large space in the society papers, A writer in one of l them, in describing his experience, says that quite recently he was on the parade at Eastbourne in the height of the season, in the company of a German gentleman, a man of the world, who knows the life | of most countries, but had never before visited British watering-place. Sudden | ly he uttered a Teutonic expletiye and ex- claimed in horror: Look at that manl" It was high water. A raft was moored in l front of the bathing-machine at a dis- l tance of twenty yards or less from the shore. On to this had climbed a male bather, wearing the indecent apology for bathing garment which suffices for British modesty, that Is to say, he was as naked as the Apollo Belyedere, or any other nude statue in a well-regulated museum. As he stood on the raft facing the public on shore, second climbed up and Joined him, then a third. They re- mained there for few minutes display ing their manly forms to the crowd on the parade, and then dved. Then others came up and exhibited themselves My German friend asked if such things were really allowed in England. and when l assured him that we thought nothing of them, he mastered his amazement as well as he could, and proceeded to revise his estimate of the national character He told me afterwards that he had come to the conclusion that real modesty and decency are unknown in England, and that all we have in their place is prudery and conventional propriety. He is not the first or last foreigner who has formed that opinion, and If one only looked at our bathing arrangements the opinion is amply justified Owing to this lack of delicacy or decency or whatever 1t is the attempts that have been made of late years to reform sea-bathing on the con- tinental model have so far made things worse rather than better. That is cer- tainly the case, when mixed bathing is allowed as 1t Is at many places, without insisting that men shall be properly clothed in the water, or when bathing without machines Is allowed on the beach, not only with no proper regula- tions as to costume in the water, but without the slightest provision for priva- cy when dressing and undressing
 The grossest indecencies have always been tolerated at English watering places in a way that they never would be abroad. Some years ago I remember witnessing, in company with a French friend an edifying scene on Brighton beach. A lady well known in the town was taking her bath, and a cluster of sght-seers had gathered round. The sea was rather rough, and there were only one or two machines in use at this spot wheeled down barely to the waters edge. It was in the days of the blue bathing gown. Mrs. Grundy's favorite invention. Arrayed in this garment the lady sat on the shingle, holding a rope, and facing the spectators, who pressed just as close as they could without getting their feet wet. Every time big wave burst on the damsel. the bathing-gown became sadly deranged, and the spectators Uttered. The lady, however. readjusted the gar ment and sat on quite unconcerned. At last there came a big wave. and then my French acquaintance shrugged his