fences, while the ever-watchful officer at the telephone, noting the repulse, informs the guns, which once more commence their devastating uproar. The Major is left behind, killed on the hillside, and the command devolves upon the last surviving officer, a young Second Lieutenant, who a year ago was still studying at the Military College at Hiroshima.

The corpses of those who have perished in former assaults have been largely augmented by the fresh casualties, until the barren bleak soil is carpeted with the prone khaki figures. Some of the wounded, dragging their paralyzed limbs painfully behind them, are crawling down the slope to the cover below, but many of them are killed by the crashing volleys from above, for the Russian fire has redeveloped its former fury. Japanese reserves come rushing up the saps and into the trench; but their arrival is too late, for the assault has failed, and all they can now do is to reinforce the sadly depleted troops in the firing-line. Nothing has been gained, and many more Japanese soldiers have gone to their eternal rest, their blood spilt on a foreign hillside in their efforts to uphold the glory of their country and flag. The gray-faced survivors regard the capture of the hill as hopeless, for this has not been the first, nor yet the twentieth, assault that has terminated in failure. It has been an event in their lives which has taken place with appalling regularity, and every man knew when he went into the trench that of the members of his regiment barely half would live to see the next day.

As they lie in their shallow protection, the tenacity of the enemy seems marvellous, and they cannot help feeling an admiration for them, in spite of the awful loss for which they have been responsible. Disheartened and depressed they certainly are, but not

afraid-for what Japanese soldier in the heat of the conflict suffers the pangs of fear? They have all been taught that it is an everlasting honor to die for their Emperor; and this they fully believe, for have they not shaved off their eyebrows and moustaches, so that their wives and sweethearts in Japan may have some personal memento in case they should fall in the service of their country? The fight meanwhile continues, and word is passed round the reinforced trenches that another assault will take place in half an hour's time. It is hoped that the Russians will be unprepared for another attack at so short an interval from the first, and the silent men prepare themselves for the fresh effort.

The Second Lieutenant meanwhile is doing a most peculiar thing, for, calling to one of his men, he tells him to bring eight or nine hand-grenades. The soldier obeys, and the officer, divesting himself of his sword and other accoutrements, fastens them at equal intervals round his body with a length of cord, taking care to bring the ends of the long flexible fuses to the front. He then joins these together so that they may all be ignited at once, and, beckoning to the soldier, gives him some instruction in a low voice. The private looks surprised, but says nothing, for he must not question the doings of his officer, and, saluting, he remains by the side of his superior. The halfhour soon elapses, and once more the whistles sound and the bayonets are fixed. With the second signal the men are up and scrambling over the low breast work before them, and an instant later they rush up the steep hillside; their "Banzais" telling the enemy that another attack has commenced.

Again the crashing volleys ring out, and again the casualties occur as before, but the Second Lieutenant and his attendant soldier-the former puffing at a cigarette-are not touched, and

reach the Russian trench-line together. The officer gives one last cheer to urge on his men, and then presses the lighted end of the cigarette well into the priming of the fuses at his waist. Satisfying himself that they are well alight, he takes a flying leap on to the bristling bayonets below, impaling himself, as he does so, upon as many of their points as he can gather into his body. In another instant, and before the surprised Russians can withdraw their weapons, there is a thundering report, and bits of flesh from dismembered human bodies are flung upwards by the force of the explosion, while a rain of blood and particles of flesh bespatters all those in the vicinity. Of the heroic Japanese officer there is no trace; but by converting his body into a living grenade he has killed a dozen of the enemy, and into the gap thus formed his men tumble pell-mell.

For the first time they have effected a lodgment in the Russian defences, and slowly, but surely, every step fiercely contested, they force their way forward until they have either killed or routed the remnant of the defending garrison. The foothold once gained, the capture of the remaining works is but a matter of time and further sacrifice of human life; and within twentyfour hours the hill for which they have been fighting, the key to the position, is in the hands of the Japanese. The Rising Sun banner has once more been triumphant.

Away in far-off Japan, on the outskirts of Tokyo, there lives an old widowed lady. Her husband was killed fighting for his country in the ChinoThe Cornhill Magazine.

Japanese war, and her only son met his death on a battlefield at Port Arthur ten years later. She sometimes gazes at the faded photograph of a youth in the uniform of a military cadet, and in these smiling features we can recognize the hero of the episode on The Hill. The little woman, although she feels a terrible sadness, cannot help realizing a supreme satisfaction, for she has given all she held dear-first her husband and then her only child-to the service of her Emperor. Below the portrait, and mounted in a little lacquered frame, are three medals; the first, hanging by its green and white ribbon, is the Order of the Golden Kite-corresponding to our Victoria Cross; the next is the Order of the Rising Sun; and the third, with its green, white, and blue ribbon, is the Russo-Japanese war medal. She feels a fulness of the heart as she looks at these tokens of her son's heroism; and were they not presented to her by her Empress, thus giving them a far greater value in her eyes?

Far away, in the Liau Tung Peninsula, the gaunt hill rears its rugged head skywards as an everlasting monument to the thousands of souls who have gone to their eternal rest whilst struggling for its possession. Its riven and furrowed slopes, battered out of all recognition by the awful artilleryfire, are surely a fitting tribute to the heroic spirits of those killed in that fearful conflict, but in particular to the unparalleled heroism of the young Second Lieutenant, the widow's only child.

Taprell Dorling.

The Government's so-called Reform Bill is the most shameless piece of political partisanship that has ever been introduced into the House of Commons. These are strong words, but they can be proved up to the hilt.

Our electoral system is far from fair or reasonable. It is full of glaring anomalies and injustices. At present, however, the anomalies and injustices are scattered so blindly that they produce a kind of wild equity. One party in the State is injured and placed at a disadvantage by one set of anomalies and the other party by another set of anomalies. That being the case, what do the Liberal Government propose to do? They propose to select those anomalies which are injurious to their party and to reform them in a way which they believe will very largely increase the number of votes available for Liberals. Those electoral anomalies which tell against the Unionist Party, and so in favor of the Liberals, though they are undoubtedly the most glaring and, from the public point of view, the most injurious, they propose to leave entirely untouched and unremedied. That is, they propose to commit what is in spirit the most flagrant piece of gerrymandering that any body of politicians has ever dared to contemplate. The most unscrupulous of American "bosses," framing an electoral system in a raw Western State, might indeed look with envy at their cold-blooded effrontery.

What is the Government's excuse for proposals so monstrous? They tell us that they quite admit that it is very unfair that the principle of one vote one value is so little recognized that constituencies like Pontefract with 24,000 inhabitants, Rochester with 31,000both seats, by the way, return Liberals -or Radnorshire with not many over

22,000 should have the same voting power as the Romford Division of Essex with close upon 313,000 inhabitants, Walthamstow with nearly 247,000, or Wandsworth with 253,000. We have taken English comparisons, but if we compare with Ireland we find that not only has Ireland as a whole over thirty members more than she is entitled to, but that Newry with under 13,000 inhabitants, Kilkenny with under 13,000, and Galway with under 16,000 have each as much electoral power as the three Essex and London constituencies we have named. These are the kind of anomalies which the Liberal Government are in effect proposing to leave unremedied while they are compassing heaven and earth to get rid of the far smaller scandal of plural voting. It is idle for Liberals to tell us that they are not at any rate leaving the Irish over-representation alone because their Home Rule Bill will set it right. In reality it will do nothing of the kind, or, rather, it will only remove the anomaly by setting up one which is even worse. Newry has now about twenty times the voting power that Romford has; but, if Home Rule passes, the people of Newry, and indeed of every Irish constituency, will not only have voting power over all their domestic concerns, but will have in addition a voting power over the domestic concerns of England quite as great as that possessed by the largest and most important constituencies of England. Ireland with a population of 4,381,000 will send forty-two members to the House of Commons, or, roughly, one member for every 100,000 of her inhabitants, whereas a group of English constituencies can be named with a population as great as that of Ireland which return not forty-two but only thirty members of Parliament.

We need not, however, deal very se

A

riously with this apology, for we know that Liberals are somewhat chary of using it. Their official excuse for insisting on the principle of one man one vote while they do nothing to carry out the complementary and equally democratic principle of one vote one value is that they intend on some future occasion to deal with Redistribution. year ago it might have been possible to be taken in by such a promise of future reform. We wonder now that even a Radical Government has the audacity to speak of it. That is a form of Parliamentary humbug which can only be used once to befool the country. The nation has not forgotten, though apparently the Cabinet have, that when the Veto Bill was passed last year the Government, by means of the Preamble, solemnly pledged themselves to reform the House of Lords. But that pledge has not only not been kept: it is obvious that there is no real intention of carrying it out. The Preamble has proved waste paper. Yet there is time apparently to introduce every other sort of measure except this one. The Preamble served its purpose in inducing a good many moderate Liberals and non-partisan electors to acquiesce in the Veto Bill, and having served its purpose it is now cynically shelved to the Greek Kalends. After such a record as that who is going to trust a Government which says that it will some day or other introduce a Redistribution Bill? It is all very well for the Westminster Gazette to assure Mr. F. E. Smith that "we are as anxious as he can be that Redistribution shall be accomplished before Parliament is dissolved." But no sane politician believes for a moment that Redistribution will take place before the next General Election.

The proof of what we are saying is easy. If the Government had really meant business in this matter nothing would have been easier for them than

to have accompanied their electoral Reform Bill with a Redistribution Bill. Had they done so, as they know quite well, the Unionist Party would have been obliged, nay, would have been quite willing, to meet them as they met the extension of the Franchise Bill in 1884 as soon as it was accompanied by a Redistribution Bill. One man one vote accompanied by a complementary measure giving one vote one value could have been passed by consent-the only proper and reasonable way under our party system for dealing with electoral reform. But the Government have been careful to make no such proposal for an equitable compromise. They have not even proposed to pledge themselves by putting Redistribution into a preamble. Possibly they were right here, for preamble is not a word which Liberals are now very fond of:

Oh no, we never mention it,
Its name is never heard;
Our lips are now forbid to frame
The once familiar word.

In spite of this, however, we expect many a moderate Liberal is to be found to whom the words of the famous ditty we have quoted come home with no small poignancy. Sir Edward Grey certainly must feel the force of the refrain:

From Bill to Bill they hurry me
To banish my regret,
And when they win a vote from me
They think that I forget.

The last refuge of the Liberal who is perplexed and perturbed by the cynicism of his party leaders is to say that, even if all we have said is true, the Unionists, if they were in earnest, ought not to refuse half the loaf of electoral justice because they cannot at the same time get the whole. "Why," he says, "should not the Unionists at any rate combine in putting an end to the scandals of our registration system and when they come into office at some