protection and a revenue tariff, have been forgotten. We woke up to a sense of our place in the world, and began to think in larger units. Our strides towards commercial supremacy we should have taken in time if we had had no war with Spain; but we should probably have taken them much more slowly and timidly, for our attitude was an apologetic one towards the rest of the world. We were afraid of entangling alliances, and we were almost content with our home market. In fact, the experience that the Philippine problem has given us is among the most helpful chapters in our whole national history. We showed again the character of American manhood by the conduct of our navy and of our army; and again we gave conclusive proof, as of old, that, when men of English stock set out to do a new task, hysterical criticism cannot deter them. The race has found its development by doing things. doing things it has learned its wisdom and built its institutions. Common sense expressed in action-that is the American character, as it has been the English character behind it for a thousand years; and never yet has despondency buttered a single parsnip out of its garden. THE VISIT OF THE CUBAN COMMITTEE By COMMITTEE Cuban Constitu- to have only in the United States. They got the point of view of the United States government- -a point of view that is in every respect friendly to Cuba, but which might naturally be misunderstood in the rhetorical atmosphere of Havana. There is now less doubt than ever that the Platt amendment will be accepted by the Cubans. There is of course some dissent in Cuba from its terms-there would be some dissent from the terms of any propositionbut every week since the amendment was adopted by Congress substantial progress seems to have been made towards an amicable working basis of agreement. The most difficult part of our whole Cuban programme is the economic part of it. Are we willing to make a reciprocity treaty whereby her products shall not be too heavily taxed in our market in comparison with competing American products, and whereby her tariff (which a United States commission is now drawing up) shall be favorable to such of our products as she imports? An amusing turn is given to the American discussion of the subject by the sudden realization by the anti-Imperialists that the effect of the Platt amendment will be to discourage and probably to prevent the annexation of Cuba-in other words, that the Administration's plan is and has always been really anti-Imperialist. The opponents of the Platt A of theade a visit to the amendment play directly into the hands of the tional Convention a ence. WHAT HAS BEEN DONE IN CHINA ROM sheer weariness the public is losing FRON its acute interest in events in China. Diplomatic negotiations, particularly with a Chinese court, are wearisome and full of delay; but even with these checks on speed, the progress made seems to be unpardonably slow. United States to confer with the President and Annexationists, who oppose Cuban independthe Secretary of War and to find out the temper of the American people. The President received them cordially, and all the questions that they asked at Washington were frankly answered by the proper authorities; and they had opportunity to talk with representatives of every shade of American opinion. They conducted themselves with great dignity too. Most of them refrained from disclosing their opinions through the newspapers, but they uniformly expressed themselves as greatly pleased by their visit and by their reception. But General Portuondo, who had been opposed to the Platt amendment, expressed himself as satisified with it after his interview with President McKinley. These Cuban gentlemen were as heartily welcomed by American sentiment as by our officials at Washington; and they did well to The best way to reach an understand ing is by such a conference as they were able come. The most important matter of the negotiations has now been reached; for the representatives of the Powers have agreed upon an indemnity in the enormous sum of about $337,000,000. It will probably require months to decide whether China can pay it and how she shall pay it. It will soon be a year since the shocking assault was made on the ministers at Pekin; and the final settlement of the enormously complex difficulties that grew out of the Boxer movement is not yet in sight. The Imperial capital has been looted and desecrated; European civilization has been disgraced by its soldiers' conduct and by "punitive" expeditions; the Chinese court is as mysterious and vague in its character as ever; the principal Chinese culprits or revolutionists (the royal family excepted) have been put to death; the Empire has not been dismembered, but Russia has control of Manchuria; a fierce controversy about missionary activity and character has been waged to give China a long time to pay it, but that the indemnity should be apportioned according to the part taken by each nation in the relief of the ministers in Pekin. Our government has favored also the wisest proposal of allthat the extension of the area of trade should be received instead of a part of the money payment of indemnity. This makes directly for the good of China as well as of all the Powers. A PLAN REALLY TO OPEN THE EMPIRE UST as record is the informa all over Christendom with no result except tion is published that the Powers have ary zeal; and through it all, in spite of occasional reports of threatened insurrections against the throne, the great jelly-fish of the Chinese Empire has existed very much as it has existed for centuries-practically undisturbed even by events that in other nations would change both the outward form of government and the direction of civilization. The main great points for which our Government contended from the beginning have not been lost, even if they have not yet been conclusively settled-the integrity of the Empire, and the open door for trade. The United States has declined to put its legation guard under the command of General von Waldersee; our troops have not joined in his punitive expeditions, and. our Government favors a lower indemnity and easy terms of payment. THE SCANDAL OF THE INDEMNITY HE fear is that a scandal will be de veloped about the Chinese indemnity parallel to the scandal of the military misdemeanor of some of the European troops. The total sum proposed to be exacted from China is $337,000,000. The influence of our Government has been used to reduce it. But the influence of Germany and France is to increase the amount by compelling China to pay the cost of the "punitive" expeditions. All the Powers indeed except the United States, England and Japan, present claims for the cost of their forces in Pekin since the legations were relieved, and they do not propose to make deductions from their demands for the loot that has been taken. As at every preceding stage of the trouble, our State Department has been considerate and just. We have proposed not only to reduce the sum demanded to a minimum and been asked to agree to an arrangement for opening all China to trade. The formal proposition is said to have come from the Chinese Government, but it is the principle that the United States has contended for from the beginning. Before the attack on the legations at Pekin, it will be recalled, our Government secured an agreement from the principal Powers to maintain the open door. Hitherto only a small part of Chinese territory has been open to foreign trade at all; and the outside world has hardly touched the fringes of the Empire. The vast mass of the population has never been reached by foreign wares nor by the influence of outside civilization. If the European Powers will accept the opening of the whole empire at once, instead of an oppressive indemnity, the birth of a modern China and of a new era in commerce will begin; and the misguided zeal of the Chinese revolutionists who thought forever to exclude foreigners will have brought about a better result for China and for the rest of the world than statesmanship could have planned. THE UNITED STATES THROUGH EUROPEAN EYES THE HE activity of American buyers of London railway franchises and of English steamships, and the continued American subscriptions to European government loans, have again provoked discussion of a European trade alliance against the United States. That so sensible a journal as the London Spectator should treat the subject seriously, rather humorously shows the feeling of panic that American audacity has produced in the foreign mind. The Spectator declares that such an alliance of the rest of the world. against the United States may become necessary for three reasons, (1) the great wealth and energy of the Americans, (2) the fact that the United States is sadly in the way in Asia, and (3) the American attitude in South America. We have taken the Philippines, but we object, the Spectator reminds us, "to any but native powers in control of the richest countries of Asia." This remark is interesting because it shows such a gross misapprehension in so intelligent a quarter of the American purpose in the Philippines-as if we had deliberately taken the archipelago, and as if our only interest there was a commercial interest. "The United States," said President McKinley in one of his speeches on his journey, "has never acquired a foot of territory that has not been forever dedicated to liberty." To build up self-government in the Philippines is our motive-a motive apparently utterly incomprehensible to the European mind. And again, it is not true that the United States will "neither take South America nor let anybody else." Heaven forbid that we should ever "take" South America; and in a sense it is true that we forbid anybody else to "take" it. But the Spectator utterly misses the American motive and point of view. It is amazing that the simple original meaning of the Monroe Doctrine-that none but free government is desirable on this continent-is about this export duty. Export duties are no longer a part of the methods accepted by economists as an advantageous plan of raising revenue, and this proposal brings a new principle into modern English taxation. The government refused resolutely to propose a protective tariff on anything, preferring to depart from accepted principles, in this emergency, only by this export tax. The increase of the income tax brings it almost to six per cent. In other words, every man whose income is more than $3,000 a year must pay a tax on it of $150. A smaller tax is imposed on incomes between $800 and $3,000. The Boers are divided into small bands, and the British forces are of course similarly divided. It is not organized warfare but guerrilla work, at which the Boers have the advantage as long as they can afford to keep it up. Expectation is expressed almost every week that terms of peace will be arranged. But week by week the long-drawn-out contest goes on. The Boers can never win against British resources, British pride, and British tenacity; but it looks as if it would take forever and a day to convince them of it; and it has already made an enormous drain on the resources of the government. THE DECLINE OF YANKEES IN NEW ENGLAND ANKEES are slowly disappearing from yet incomprehensible. Our willingness to free Y Connecticut. Their birth-rate and their Cuba without wishing to "take" it is yet a strange and incredible thing to the European mind. THE ENORMOUS COST OF THE BOER WAR HE South African war is yet the worst task that any European nation has in hand; and the day of financial reckoning is come in England. The budget presented to Parliament shows a deficit which required the borrowing of $300,000,000. The war has already cost $755,000,000, and the total loss of men is nearly 17,000, about half of whom have died of disease. Worse even than the enormous cost (as a large body of English opinion regards it) is the necessity of modifying the English fiscal system. Not only must duties be laid on sugar, molasses and glucose, but the income tax must be raised from one shilling to one shilling twopence on the pound sterling, and an export duty of a shilling a ton be levied on coal. The fiercest controversy has been provoked death-rate balance each other, but many are going away and the birth-rate among the immigrants to the state is greatly in excess of their death-rate. The proportion of the natives to the whole population, is, therefore, appreciably diminishing. In the state's vital statistics for 1899, which have just been published, it is shown that of 20,855 births in the state, forty-five per cent. were registered as of both parents foreignborn, and only thirty-nine per cent. of native parents. The registered mortality was 14,381, of whom more than 10,000 were natives. In forty-one country towns the native deaths actually exceeded the births. These figures show that the young people have struck out into new regions, leaving the old folks behind them. The vital statistics of Massachusetts for 1899 show a similar tendency. The native deaths are more numerous than the births, and the births among the foreign population are much in excess of the deaths. This change is not yet overwhelming, but it shows a somewhat startling tendency. Yet it is a tendency that may easily be exaggerated as the number of abandoned New England farms has been exaggerated. Since New England is accurate in keeping statistics, we know better what is going on there than anywhere else, and accuracy sometimes has its penalties. A MEASURE OF THE MONEY-MARKET N these times of more or less wild guesses IN of more oran offered by the British government gives a stable and true measure of the rate of interest in an absolutely safe investment. The government's offer is of $300,000,000 in bonds at ninetyfour and one-half, bearing two and threequarters per cent. for two years, and two and one-half per cent. thereafter. British bonds have for a long time sold at a rate which gives the investor a smaller return than this; but the part of this loan that has been placed was over-subscribed many times. There were eager buyers on both sides the Atlantic. United States bonds at their present price, also yield a smaller return than these. In other words, given absolute security and a reasonably long investment, money can be had for two per cent. in any calculable quantities. volunteer soldiers will be left in the service of the United States after the end of June, for by the provisions of the Army Reörganization Act they are all then to be mustered out. Regiments of regulars will take their places in the Philippines and elsewhere. the personnel of the army constantly changed. As long as the campaigning was active, fresh men were kept at the front; the army was always young and strong. Several regiments made enviable names for themselves in the early part of the Philippine campaign. No regiment has been so idolized as the 20th Kansas, or the 10th Pennsylvania, when those two were in service. Those regiments deserve to be congratulated on the opportunities they had of displaying their qualities. They are not praised above the others, but rather regarded as having had special good luck. The country remembers their services, as it does the services of their fellow regiments, with gratitude. Out of the volunteer service have come not only famous regiments, but many officers of note also, Funston among them, and the ex-Confederates, Wheeler and Lee. When the last volunteer has been mustered out, the army officials can put the reorganized army into shape. It is proposed to station about 40,000 men in the Philippines, 30,000 in this country, 5,000 in Cuba and 1,000 in Porto Rico. These 76,000 men will constitute our standing army, for the present at least. As one picks up the roster of the volunteers and looks over the list of the regiments, whether they bear the names of States or were called simply this or that number of infantry, one must feel elated at living in a country of which any single section can alone produce thousands of loyal and patriotic men eager to defend it and to uphold its principles. THE INCREASE OF THE BRITISH AND THE Since the beginning of the war with Spain Tality of the English race by a satis the volunteers have played an important and efficient part in our military service; and they have proved again, as was proved in the sixties, that after training and seasoning, a volunteer army of the United States is as formidable a force as was ever organized. There have been in the service, since the Spanish war began, about 225,000 officers and men in the state volunteers, and about 35,000 in the national regiments, making a total of about 260,000. The national regiments, that is, regiments recruited from the whole. country instead of from limited localities, took the place of the state volunteers, just as the regulars are now taking their place. Thus factory if not large increase of population. London itself shows only a moderate increase-308,000 since 1891-because there has been during the decade a decided movement to the suburbs, many of which have grown rapidly. Of course, there is no parallel to the rapid growth of some of our cities, but Liverpool has grown 56,000; Leeds, 61,000; Birmingham, 44,000, and Manchester, 38,000. The population of London is 4,536,034, an increase in ten years of 308,000. In France, on the contrary, there has been a decrease of population during the last five years. The five years from 1891 to 1896 showed a small increase-174,000; but during the last five years the population has fallen off by 12,000. F IF EDUCATION ON THE GROUND teresting piece of literary uews that has been published for many a day. One of the latest of such lists (and as good a one as any) has been given out by Mr. Foster, the librarian of the Providence Public Library. They are the writers a part at least of whose books are placed in the room in the library that is set apart for "the literature of power." An interesting exercise in selfabasement can be got by going over such a list and counting the authors whose chief writings you have never read. one had to say what is the dullest subject in print, but the most important in practical life, one would not go far wrong by saying Good Roads. Men ought to celebrate power." Men ought to celebrate our prosperous era, in every part of the country, by building them; for a good road. is not only the best investment that any community can make, but the best evidence of enlightened public spirit, the best monument that any generation can rear to itself, and the best bequest to its successor. A somewhat novel and certainly useful method of arousing the people to action is the very practical method now tried along the line of the Illinois Central Railroad. A train with expert road-builders, the best road-building machinery and laborers, was equipped at New Orleans. It stops at places where good roads are needed, and the men set to work and build a piece of good road, as an object lesson for the people. They explain methods, the cost, and the value, and the pieces of road that they have built remain as examples and an incentive to the community. This educational enterprise is the joint work of the railroad company, the National Good Roads Association, manufacturers of road-building machinery, and of the Agricultural Department of the National Government. Wherever the party stops, local committees volunteer the use of teams and of additional laborers, and a public meeting is held. It would be hard to make a plan that would show more common sense or more helpful and far-sighted good judgment than this. It is, in fact, common sense expressed in well-directed action, and these are all the qualities that are required to make a new earth and an improved race of men to live upon it. Addison, Antoninus (Marcus Au- Epictetus, A Kempis, relius), Arabian Nights, Aristophanes, Ariosto, Arnold (Matthew), Erasmus, Euripides, Federalist, The, Petrarch, Fielding, Plato, Franklin, Plutarch, Froissart, Gibbon, Goethe, Goldsmith, Gray, Browning (Robert), Hawthorne, Bunyan, Heine, Burke, Herodotus, Burns, Homer, Browning (Mrs.), Camoens, Chanson de Roland, And such a list always raises the question whether the educated youth of the United States will ever again feel it a duty to read such a list of authors (and to read them all) as a matter of power and culture, and whether any larger number of American men and women do habitually read them. TH A LITTLE ACADEMIC INCIDENT HE larger purpose of a university training, at least in the United States, is to give men balance and breadth of judgment. An incidental purpose is to train the critical faculties. It seems inevitable in most schemes of academic work that the incidental purposethe cultivation of the critical faculties-should in some men swallow up the larger purpose. Here lies the problem of higher education in a democracy-so to train men that they will not regard mere intellectual prejudice as a high intellectual quality. An admirable illustration of mistaking priggishness for good judgment is the objection that |