THE WESTERN MAIL

Glamorgan, Wales

8 November 1913

(page 11)

MONTHLY REVIEWS.

ENGLISH.

Writing on “Railway Disasters and Dividends,” Mr. Rowland Kenney insists that the public must stand up for adequate safeguards. “If,” he says, “the members of the travelling public are not prepared to help themselves, there is no help for them. There, however, the matter lies: Railway shareholders want dividends, railway directors must make dividends. How much longer is the public prepared to continue to let dividend making interfere with the provision of adequate safeguards against accidents to human life and limb?” Among other things the writer suggests automatic signaling, so that the signals shall be conveyed to the driver in his cab. M. Shortt contributes some extracts from private letters written by Dr. Thomas Shortt, who was principal medical officer in St. Helena during the last months of Napoleon’s life. “I saw him immediately after death,” writes the narrator, “and was surprised to find so little alteration in his appearance. In death his countenance was the finest I ever saw, expressing the greatest softness and placidity that can be imagines. He was lying on a small bed, surrounded by his followers, and had a silk handkerchief on his head, which added much to his looks, and as he had been long out of the sun, his complexion was perfectly white.” Mr. Israel Zangwill has an interesting, but over-strained plea for woman suffrage: the Editor gives some account of “Editorial Amenities”—some of which appear to have a character the reverse of an amenity: and Mr. Aleister Crowley writes a disparaging critique of American art.