accepting "colonies." It is too late to do so when they once have been annexed. If we cannot afford to watch them, to care for them, to give them paternal rule when no other is possible, we do wrong to hoist our flag over them. Government by the people is the ideal to be reached in all our possessions, but there are races of men now living under our flag as yet incapable of receiving the town meeting idea. A race of children must be treated as children, a race of brigands as brigands, and whatever authority controls either must have behind it the force of arms. Alaska has made individuals rich, though the government has yet to get its money back. But whether colonies pay or not, it is essential to the integrity of the United States itself that our control over them should not be a source of corruption and waste. It may be that the final loss of her colonies, mismanaged for two centuries, will mark the civil and moral awakening of Spain. Let us hope that the same event will not mark a civil and moral lapse in the nation which receives Spain's bankrupt assets. V. THE LESSONS OF THE PARIS THE second administration of President Cleveland was especially characterized by the effort to promote certain governmental reforms regarded by the President and his advisers as vitally important to the welfare of the United States. Most notable among these was the proposed treaty of arbitration with Great Britain. It was hoped that by its peaceful operation all bitterness of feeling between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations was to be avoided in the future. All disputed questions were to be removed. from the category of war and diplomacy, from the arbitrament of force and intrigue to be settled on a basis of simple justice and international law. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of the President and the earnest advocacy of the able Secretary of State the proposed treaty of arbitration failed to receive the approval of the Senate of the United States. That arbitration should rightfully supersede war is doubtless the almost universal opinion of intelligent citizens of both nations, but that the treaty in question would have this * Published in the Forum, May, 1899. result many of them were led to doubt. Among the arguments urged against the proposed treaty of 1896 was the fact of the failure of the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration of 1893, to secure justice or equity. Its decision, inconsistent with itself, not only failed to settle the fur seal dispute, but brought it to an acute phase, for which no remedy was furnished. This condition of things has passed by without serious friction solely because more striking matters have cast it into the shade. The international good feeling which now exists has no relation to the principle of arbitration, and the question at issue in 1893 is still unsettled. "pro Setting aside minor claims and side issues, the Paris Tribunal rendered its decision in favor of the "protection and preservation" of the fur seal in the waters of the North Pacific and Bering Sea, To insure this " tection and preservation" the same tribunal prescribed regulations, having, by the consent of the nations concerned, the validity of international law. These regulations have in three years achieved the commercial destruction of the valuable animal they were intended to protect and preserve. In a few years more, unless rescinded by international agreement, they must accomplish its actual biological extinction. If these regulations had been designed to promote destruction and extermination instead of "protection and preservation," they could hardly have been more effective to that end. It is not to be supposed that the high Tribunal of international arbitration so stultified itself as to do this on purpose. The plain intention of the Tribunal was actually to protect and preserve, and it failed in this intent simply through its neglect or inability to master the |