OF benevolent neutrality we have all heard; and of the existence of the malevolent kind, too, we are quite frequently reminded. The Allied countries failed to perceive the benevolence of the Vatican’s utterance that the violation of Belgium “happened in the time of my predecessor,” and so apparently called for no comment from the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Since that interview the inaction of the Vatican, which had till then been almost complete, and has since been troubled by one or two tentative mentions of olive branches and no more, has appeared in more than a dubious light to the Allied nations. In France, where the opening of the war brought about something like a religious revival, the Pope’s inaction and the Pope’s speech caused a cold Gulf Stream of suspicion and disappointment to flow steadily Romeward. The spectacle of a Protestant premier of a two thirds Protestant country favoring a mission to the Vatican is one which would in any case have troubled Protestants, and in this case does not even please Roman Catholics. Then who does it please? Raemaekers knows.

Alas for the days when we associated screens with “little French milliners”; what a Lady Teazle have we here! And what a school of something worse than scandal holds its classes in the seminaries of war-politics! Dr. Kuyper, “the snowy-breasted pearl” of the drawing, is, perhaps, guilty of hoping a thing he does not avow; of working for it; but at least even Raemaekers, a stern critic, admits that without being a villain (we know the mark Raemaekers sets on the brow of his villains) he may be still quite pleased with himself. But the two behind the screen are furtive, are anxious, are unable to enjoy even an act that should further their plans; they are pleased, but their pleasure is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a thought which turns ever more eagerly to the future, and turns back ever more anxiously to the present.

H. PEARL ADAM.