the crime of rebellion. College professors, learned men, educators, and writers went into voluntary and involuntary exile. These classes returned to Cuba They are a part of its future. Some of them are dreamers. They dream with an apostle of liberty* of another island:

"The dreamer lives on forever,

The toiler toils for a day."

These men may prefer to dream of idyllic government in the ideal future rather than to work for the imperfect structure which must be set up by toiling day by day. Their fondness for speculative thought, their theorizing on the nature of liberty, may unfit them for the intensely practical business of government. Their ability to administer the customs houses will never be demonstrated. A poet or dreamer in a Latin custom house will be a failure. But the sentiments which inspire them, and which they seek to inculcate, will have a fruitful soil. The dreamers will have their place in the evolution of the Cuban commonwealth. The problem is to evolve a successful administration not only of the custom house, but of all public offices between the dreamers on one side, and on the other side the men who think that revolution is merely a change to enable Cubans to loot their own island instead of letting Spaniards loot it. The poets and the dreamers themselves would be out of place in the custom house, but they have their place in keeping alive the sentiment which demands honest administration.

In Pensacola are the ruins of an old Spanish fort. * John Boyle O'Reilly.

At St. Augustine are the ruins of the oldest Spanish fort on the American continent. Near Kingston, Jamaica, are the ruins of what must have been an extensive, almost impregnable, Spanish fort. When the American troops landed at Daiquiri and Siboney the old fortress which was discovered in the jungle compelled their admiration. They might have thought, too, of the vengeance of history, if they had reflected that near Daiquiri landed the Spanish expedition from Hispaniola which crushed the native chief Hatuey and established four hundred years of Spanish dominion over Cuba. The defences of Santiago de Cuba called forth the praise of the keenest military engineers. The defences of Habana won admiration for their scientific thoroughness and for their mathematical exactness. If forts, moats, walls, castles, cannons, and batteries constituted a state, Spain never would have lost her American possessions.

Men, says Sir William Jones, constitute a state. And they would have constituted a colony. Battlements and walls and moated gates went down not because Spain lacked men to defend them; it was because she lacked men who knew that in themselves were the power and the majesty of the state. The lands from which the Conquistadores sought to draw only the gold that was yellow to the eyes, while neglecting that which renews itself with the turning over of the soil, could not constitute a state. All this has gone. The mediæval civilization of fortresses and cannons is buried when the twentieth century is opening its chrysalis of potentialities. The future commonwealth of Cuba must be built with sound principles of government at the

foundation, and with men-real men of muscle and mind-for the builders. If they have not the faculties of government fully developed, they have acquired the primary aptitudes.

When and How to End Military Control-Position of United States -Good Government from Without-Ruling by Decree-Transition to Civil Authority-Calling a Constitutional ConventionUniversal Suffrage the Basis for a Plebiscite-No Denial to Race of Color-Assumptions of Americanization-Some Un-American Influences-Arguments for Annexation--Mistaken Impressions -The Latin Doubters-Cuban Understanding Is StatehoodParties During Transition Period-Gómez and His Foes-Protectorate as Actual Independence-Opposing Economic Tendencies-Sugar as a Factor-Choice of Popular Assembly.

TRANSITION of institutions may be during a transit of flags. The standard of Spain is of yesterday. The emblem of Cuba may be of to-morrow. The flag of the United States is of to-day. The creation of a commonwealth is under its folds.

This does not mean an indefinite continuance of the American military occupation. Like other questions, the one as to the time of its withdrawal is better met frankly. No policy of avoidance will be successful in dealing with these problems. The pacification of the island may not be complete, but it is far enough advanced to look forward. It is in advance of industrial progress, though the latter is not lagging. The question of the near future is both when and how to end the American military control in Cuba. It is of to-day,

though by to-day should be understood not a few weeks or a few months, but a definite period. To-day * is a

year.

Pleas may be offered for indefinite control, but they fall away in the imperious presence of facts. Incentives to vagueness may be urged on the ground that the people are so far from being capable of self-government that they must be put through a long course of political training. All the arguments for indeterminate occupation would in a short time force the necessity of a declaration of such purpose, and such a declaration would mean ultimate and coercive annexation. Sifted through all evasions, this is what these pleas mean.

Before going further a restatement may be made of the position of the United States with reference to Cuba. That position is both of to-day and of all time to come. The United States is a continuous intervening power. In ending the Spanish misgovernment and the strife which grew out of it, the American nation pledged itself not to permit internal misgovernment in the future. Whatever shifting there may be of policies, it is pledged to prevent anarchy and intolerable internal conditions just as it ended those conditions under Spanish sovereignty. It is also a continuous protecting power for Cuba. Should an independent government be set up, no bullying European nation could seize a pretext of damages to its subjects and send war-vessels into the harbors of Cuba to enforce the claim without reckoning with the United States. Besides, in the obligations for good government which it incurred the United States became the protecting power for foreign subjects therein, * October, 1899.