innocent purchasers can justify the endurance of so great a public wrong as that involved in the permanent alienation to a private corporation of the water-supply and water-power of a great State. The third bill is not so clearly right. It protects the city; t t it leaves the country unprotected. A bill which allows the municipality to go into any district of the State and take its "surplus water" makes no account of the fact that country districts may want their surplus water for their own use. To illustrate: In the Highlands of the Hudson the water-supplies furnished by two sources in Orange County have been within the last ten years taken, one by West Point, the other by the village of Cornwall-on-Hudson, for their own water-works. The latter also relies upon its surplus water for its electric lighting. If the municipality of New York had taken this water-supply for its own use, West Point and Cornwall would have remained without water-works, and the latter without lights. It may be said that it is not essential that a village should have a water-supply, and that such supply is essential to the city; that the city cannot live without it. That is true. But it does not follow that the city should be permitted to take the water wherever it can find it, regardless of the inconvenience which it may inflict on the country districts. The opposition from this measure does not come alone from the Ramapo Company; it does not come chiefly from that company. It comes from rural communities which object to making their water-supply dependent on the will of the city, much as the city objects to making its watersupply dependent on the will of a private corporation. No prophet can foretell to-day what twenty-five years hence will be the demand for the surplus water of the State. It is probable that every considerab: town, and not improbable that every enterprising village, will by that time have its waterworks and its electric plant. The states man should look further ahead than five years. He should consider more than the interests of the city of New York. He should not be thwarted in his endeavor to secure the highest and best life of the entire State by a too exclusive regard for innocent holders of Ramapo stock. He should seek to devise a plan by which the water of the State may be justly and wisely used for the purpose of the people, and all the people, of the State, in country, town, and cy. This is not the work of an hour. To a consideration of what those interests require we may return hereafter. Here we record, for the direct benefit of all the people of the State of New York, and for the indirect benefit of the people of other States, the peril which threatens, not the city only, but the State; and with it our conviction that the State should not be contented with simply protecting the city from the covetousness and corruption which endanger its life, which it has partially done by the Fallows Bill, but should protect itself from what has been well called the Ramapo octopus, by taking away from it the extraordinary powers conferred upon it so carelessly by the act of 1895. The people of the State ought to own and control the water-supply of the State. That seems to us axiomatic. They ought to give it neither to a private nor yet to a municipal corporation. How they can wisely and efficiently accomplish this result is a question which we leave to be considered hereafter. Good Friday The inner history of the life of Christ is suggested in its entirety during the successive weeks of the Lenten season. The awakening to the consciousness of oneness with the Father; the message from the Father; the divine power with which that message was enforced and re-enforced; the sudden and decisive contact with the world, as man has made it, in the temptation; the victory of the spirit over the lower aims of the world; the long self-denial, patience, loneliness, and revelation of ultimate truth in perfect character; the descent into the shadow of death, and the reascent into life: all these deep mysteries and typical experiences are recalled and commemorated between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The instinct which has given the place of first importance to the death of our Lord has not been wholly wrong in result, though at times it has been misleading in doctrine, ritual, and symbol. In Catholic countries it is impossible to get away from the physical aspects of Good Friday: from the crucified body, the thorn-crowned head, the drooping and smitten figure. The terrible tragedy is reproduced and kept in mind by a realism which is often appalling and sometimes replsive. One is made to feel as if the uncounted years of the life of the Lord were thrown into permanent eclipse by the three hours' agony on the cross. And in a large part of Christian theology the fall of man instead of the breathing of the divine life into him has been the starting-point of human history, and man's sin rather than God's love has been made the foundation of what has been called "the plan of salvation;" as if salvation were something devised outside a man instead of being the true and normal fruition of his nature and life. In the literalism of Catholic art and of Protestant theology the gloom of Good Friday has overshadowed the glory of Easter. In this long-continued over-emphasis of the death of Christ instinct has found justification in the searching light which Calvary throws on sin. The cross was but an incident in the limitless life of Christ; death has no place in the divine experience. From the divine side the immense importance attached to Good Friday is a monstrous exaggeration; but from the human side Good Friday still looms and will always loom portentous and awful on the field of history. On that day human hands frantically strove to destroy human hope; men would have killed God if hate, blindness, greed, and cowardice could have done it. They turned with rage on the one Helper among all their helpers who had not only light for the mind but life for the soul. And the most awful aspect of this denial and crucifixion of the Divine lay in the fact that the Roman was only the executor of the will of the Jew. Christ was rejected, not by the world, but by the Church; not by moral outcasts, but by priests, Pharisees, and scribes. Let religious people study that awful fact, and ask what it means. The hideousness of sin; its moral loathsomeness; the black horror of it; the death at the heart of it as the final fruit of its corrupting processes; its gradual defilement; its slow blinding the eyes; its insensible withdrawing of vitality from will and spirit-this is the revelation of Calvary; and Good Friday is black and portentous, not in the life of Christ the sufferer, but in the life of man the executioner. In the shadow of the cross sin stands uncovered-the antagonist of the loving God, the betrayer of the Christ, the mortal foe of men. A Light-Bringer Out of a beautiful old home in the heart of one of the loveliest of old New England villages she has entered into the larger life. Fourscore y ars of integrity, courage, widening sympathy, and dawning light have at last liberated her. Her whole life had been one of emancipation. Instead of depleting her vitality, advancing years transmuted it into something more spiritual and tenacious; every decade found her further on the path to freedom. She moved steadily forward into clearer knowledge and so into more tolerant and deeply human relations with others. She had always loved the best, for she was born to rectitude and refinement; but she confirmed the bent of her nature by her own choices; she grew out of fine, unconscious purity into conscious harmony with the best in life and thought. Her opportunities were of the best, but she was always greater than her opportunities; her associations were fortunate and enriching, but her real fortune was in herself. From her earliest youth she seemed to hear a voice calling from beyond the narrow boundaries of her conscious life, and she followed with instinctive loyalty. She loved life and light with a passion of soul which seemed to bear her silently on into ever larger spheres. It was pathetic at times to see her standing, eager to pass on, but compelled to wait and learn. She wanted all life and light now, and to be held back in a pursuit in which she never grew weary was at times a sore trial. It is easy to imagine the burst of joy which came to her when she found the barriers down at last and the sky clear from horizon to horizon. It will be bliss enough for her, for many and many a day, to sit still in the unshadowed Light and sun her soul. There was a fellowship between her nature and the sun; she loved high lights; she used to call herself a fireworshiper; her whole nature kindled and glowed when warmth or light of love or thought touched her. So deep was her idealism, so victorious her aspiration, that faith and hope radiated from her. She carried weaker and poorer natures with her by sheer force of superior vitality. She was life incarnate, and now that she has gone to the source of life her whole career lies like a broad beam across the years. She was a child of the light, and it shone from her as she walked along the ways of men. Of such as she--born lovers of God and of their kind-there is, at the end, no association with earth; the heavens are so near and real that the mind instinctively recalls the words which fitly commemorate the light-bringers: The wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, And they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. Unused Power One of the most interesting things in life is the unexpected development of power which sometimes takes place in people who have before shown little or no promise of exceptional energy or ability. This development is sometimes as great a surprise to the man in whom it takes place as to his friends. He awakes to find himself in possession of a force the presence of which, even in the germ, he did not suspect. What happens in such a case is not the sudden appearance in a man's nature of something which was not there before; it is the sudden disclosure of something which has hitherto been concealed. Men do not begin life fully developed. Occasionally a man appears who is as mature at twenty-five as at sixty, but this rarely happens, and when it does happen it is a distinct limitation. Young men, as a rule, are bundles of undeveloped possibilities. They grow by putting forth their strength; and the fullness and symmetry of their unfolding depend largely upon the completeness with which they give out what is in them. When a man suddenly discloses a power the presence of which he did not suspect, he is simply putting forth what was always in him. He has created nothing new, he has taken nothing in from without; he has simply used his own. It is probably true that the great majority of men never fully realize their own powers, because they never completely put them forth. Society is full of undeveloped, or partially developed, personalities: men who have possibilities to which they have not given full expression, powers which they have not thoroughly trained, capacities which they have not adequately recognized. It is true that some men overwork; that is to say, they do one thing too continuously, or they do many things without adequate refreshment and variety; but very few men work to the top of their power. Very few men completely unfold all that is in them. As the earth is full of treasures of all kinds, the existence of which is not yet suspected in many localities, and which are presently to bring private fortunes and general prosperity to those localities, so there are men and women the world over who are rich in power of the highest kind, but who have no suspicion of the fact because they have never given themselves full development through activity. More men and women fail by reason of underestimation of their power than by reason of over-valuation. As a rule, people of conscience do not take themselves at an adequate valuation; they do not believe enough in themselves. If they believed more in their own resources, they would make more out of their lives. It is astonishing how outward circumstances will sometimes evolve unsuspected energy from a man who has heretofore been regarded as essentially commonplace by his neighbors and by himself. When such a man feels the pressure of conditions, he often awakes to the possession of a power which responds quickly and adequately to a call from without. Every great crisis calls, and does not call in vain, for energy, selfsacrifice, and genius; but these things ought to come to the light by virtue of inward impulse; they ought not to depend on outward conditions. A man ought to put forth all that is him as a matter of loyalty to himself and consecration to his fellows. He ought to lead in the evolution of spiritual energy rather than allow himself to be dependent on some bugle call from without, To believe in ourselves in the sense of regarding ourselves as full of the germs of growth is not only to secure the highest growth, but it is to render the finest service which a man can render to his fellows, THE NAVAL LYDDITE GUN. MR. BARNES IN THE FOREGROUND The Boer War in Pictures [Mr. James Barnes, the special correspondent of The Outlook in South Africa, four of whose articles have already appeared in this paper, is now at the front with Lord Roberts. From his private letters we learn that several articles, written since that last published, have been forwarded by him to The Outlook. Unfortunately, either through the action of the military censorship or through the failure of native runners to get these articles to the post, none has reached us in time for this issue. The present article is, therefore, chiefly pictorial, and offers some interesting glimpses of camp life and of the fighting-line as shown in photographs sent by Mr. Barnes. With the pictures we print some extracts from a personal letter written under date of February 9.—THE EDITORS.] I AM just back here [Modder River Station] from the battle of Koodoesberg, and rode in over the veldt, some thirty miles, in a little over three hours. The Highland Brigade had a smart little fight out there, and if it had not been for a slip, we would have brought back perhaps a thousand prisoners and a gun, for at one time we had them, to all appearances, in the hollow of our hand. I was sick at heart on Tuesday and Wednesday, for I lost one of the best friends I had made here-" Freddie" Tait, lieutenant of the Black Watch, and ex golfing champion of England. Such a fine chap, and such a good-looking, brave, jolly soldier! He had been severely wounded at Magersfontein, and had returned to his regiment, was scheduled for promotion, and was in command of his company. He was about twenty-six, but he had with all his boyishness and simplicity a great deal of dignity and force, and his men worshiped him. We left here on Saturday, about four thousand strong, to go down the Riat River to Koodoesberg Drift, for what reason I don't know, except that the enemy were there. Well, we camped first at Thorn Hill, and next day, Sunday, made a forced march (we had only four hundred lancers with us and one battery of field artillery, almost all Highlanders) to Koodoesberg. I shall never forget that march. It was scorching hot-blazing, glaring heat, without a breath of wind. Of course the Highlanders drank up all the water in their water-bottles in the first hour, and then it began. They fell out literally by scores; the ambulances could not begin to carry them, and there was no shade nearer than the river, two miles away, and the Boers even said to be there. Men went off their heads with heat and lack of water and fatigue. I was riding my old horse Julien, who is a big, strong beast, and I gave him up and loaded him with some poor kilties' things, and out of curiosity I put on the straps, cartridge-boxes, and all, and took a fellow's rifle. No wonder the poor chaps fell! They were loaded down with 150 rounds of ammunition, blanket, greatcoat, haversack, rations for two days-total weight fifty pounds, besides their rifles. They were soft from their long period of inaction in camp, and had been marched the last seven miles without a halt. Before long affairs looked serious. As we headed to the north, we neared the river, and the men began to drop out and make for the water. At one place I counted over a hundred. They wouldn't leave. They just lay there and drank. It was almost two o'clock; the lancers' patrol reported that the Drift was held, and we expected to have a fight on our hands by four. The column struggled on, and soon the Drift was in sight. We heard shots ahead, but luckily there were only a handful of the enemy there, and the lancers drew them off. As soon as we had forded the stream I ceased my soldiering, and sought shelter and food in a big mud-brick house. A correspondent generally picks out the best place he sees for headquarters, and then the General comes along and turns him out; and this is what happened here--but I digress. Parties were sent back to gather in the stragglers. But many did not get in till midnight, and some not at all. One poor chap was found three days later out on the veldt-some fools of lancers filled him full of water at once and killed him; one man died, one has never been found, and two have just come in from a native kraal. The kilt is the most foolish dress for this country, and is responsible for much discomfort and actual suffering from sand and sun. Next day we had a fight, a little one; next day a bigger one, next day a bigger one yet, and on the fourth we cleared out, and at one time I had my doubts if I would ever see Modder River. The Highlanders redeemed themselves, for they fought stubbornly and eagerly against odds, for the Boers attacked us each day and tried to force us back. Thanks to General MacDonald's cool leadership and example, we held our position, and, as I say, mighty near bagged the lot on the kopje where our men had been fighting them for two days. I must say the Boers fought bravely, but they will not come into the open, which is wise, to say the least, for at hand to hand Tommy can beat them. Poor Tait had raised himself a little to look over the ground, and a Boer marksman saw him (the fight was at about twelve hundred yards, over ground strewn with great boulders), and a Mauser bullet went through his chest from side to side. He just said, "They have done for me this time," and pulled his helmet over his face. It was impossible to move him or even to sit up. Not far behind him, but not in quite such a hot place, lay Captain Blair, of the Seaforths. Two Highlanders lay alongside of him trying to keep him from bleeding to death from a horrible shell wound in his throat, but to no avail. Later in the day I helped carry his body down the hill, but poor Tait could not be moved until after dark; he was still alive, but died at twelve o'clock. This is about what war is-long-range firing with smokeless powder at an almost invisible enemy-a whining, buzzing, and cracking in the air, and here and there a man says "Oh," and the next day he is buried. And now for a sudden change. The crisis has come here; before three or four days have passed Lord "Bobs" will have fought the biggest battle, maybe, of the war. We have 40,000 troops here, and we move soon. |
