VOL. XVII.

No. 1.

However it may be in Mars and The New Year's Outlook other worlds not ours, the year 1897 for Spain. closes upon a vast deal of unfinished business in this particular planet that we inhabit. It had been hoped that the Cuban war might not hold over to vex another year, but the end is not yet in sight. The reports emanating from Madrid of " peace, perfect peace" in the Philippines, as mentioned in these pages last month, werelike most of the news that comes from official Spanish sources-not simply premature, but wholly apocryphal. The insurrection in that part of the world seems to be gradually succumbing under an astute policy of amnesties, gifts, and concessions to the rebellious chiefs; but it is to be inferred that the last chapter in the story of this costly colonial war will not bear an earlier date than the year 1898. Nor has the domestic political situation in the Spanish home country been relieved of the dark clouds that have enveloped it during the past year. Every one sympathizes with the queen regent, who is a woman of exemplary character and of uncommon good sense, surrounded by political corruptionists and intriguers, and defended by military incompetents and weaklings, living in an atmosphere made gloomy by omens of revolution and rumors of treachery. It is well understood that the queen regent and her young son, King Alfonso— a very recent photograph of whom we have reproduced for our frontispiece and all the other members of the royal family, including the charming young princesses, are prepared at a moment's notice to take their flight to France. Concealed artillery is trained upon the principal streets of Madrid, and everything is as ready as the circumstances will permit for the outbreak that may come at any time. It is felt, therefore, that the

year 1898 must be a momentous one for the Iberian Peninsula.

Business.

As respects the policies of the United Our Legacies of Unfinished States in matters of an international character, the year 1897 leaves as a legacy to the year 1898 (1) the unsettled question of Hawaiian annexation; (2) the question what this country should do about Cuba; (3) the irritating problem of the seals of the North Pacific; (4) the Nicaragua Canal, and (5) the proposed reciprocity treaties. Among matters of home policy, the foremost place still belongs to the question how best to revise and improve our money system. It was believed last year that the immigration question had been settled for a time by the enactment of a restrictive measure, but President Cleveland's veto was interposed, and the question holds over for discussion this year. Another legislative matter of prime importance is that of a national bankruptcy act. It was confidently supposed a year ago that this would belong to 1897 as a piece of finished business; but it remains for determination in 1898.

In the

West.

In the South the successful Nashville South and Exposition has been one of the completed episodes of 1897, while the great questions that will have been passed on to the new year include the suppression of lynching, the further restriction of the ballot, the diversification of agriculture, and the development of manufacturing. In the West the Pacific Railroad sale has been one of the most noteworthy incidents of 1897, and the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha will be the chief event of the year 1898; while the payment of debts and the revival of farming and of business enterprise, which have been the great characteristics of the year now ending, will, it is to be hoped and believed, have found their fruitage in a genuine return of prosperity in the course of the year 1898. The rush to the Klondike, chiefly from

the western part of our country, which acquired so large a volume and momentum in the late summer and early fall of 1897, promises to take the dimensions of a veritable flood when the ice and snow have melted in the coming spring.

East.

Turning to the East, we note the fact that In the the year 1897 has witnessed an expenditure by the State of New York of many millions of dollars for the deepening and widening of the Erie Canal, with the result that the work remains unfinished and will be useless unless almost as much more is secured to continue it to a completion upon the plans as adopted. Further, one must note the enactment of the "Greater New York" charter early in the old year, the great election in November, which restores Tammany to power, and the entrance, with the opening of 1898, upon the most elaborate and difficult experiment in practical municipal administration that has ever been attempted anywhere. If some deplorable tendencies have been shown in our political life in the year 1897, there has also been evident a strong and growing spirit of antagonism to those tendencies; while it is to be noted that

throughout our Eastern States, apart from politics, there has been many a cheering indication of progress in the arts and achievements of civilization. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, not to mention many a smaller city, have much that is worthy to exhibit as a result of their activities in the year now past, and still more in clear prospect for the year to come.

Canada's New Outlook.

Looking to the northward, we must note a year of exceptional importance and interest in the affairs of our Canadian neighbors. The Liberal administration of Sir Wilfrid Laurier has adopted a distinctively new theory of the position of Canada in the British empire and in the world. His assertion of nationality for his country goes further by a great deal in its ultimate moment than the theory of nationalism upon which the late Sir John MacDonald was so long maintained in power. Wilfrid's visit to Washington, although informal in its nature, was in fact a matter of vastly deeper significance than his formal visit to England to participate in the celebration of the queen's sixtieth year on the throne.

Sir

Canada's real interests

Courtesy of the New York Tribune.

R. W. Vening.

George A. Clarke.

C. F. F. Adams.

are obviously bound up with those of the United States, her connection with England being relatively strong as a matter of tradition and of generous sentiment. We reproduce a group photograph showing Sir Wilfrid and his colleagues and the Washington officials with whom they were in conference, because the event seems to us the one fraught with more historic importance for Canada than any other of the year 1897. The best interests of all parties concerned require that strictly North American questions should be dealt with and settled by North Americans in North America. So long as we allow them to be settled in London, it is not the Canadians alone who are in the position of mere colonials, but the people of the United States are to some extent in the position that they endeavored to alter in the times of George Washington. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his associates are ready to leave various questions, in which the United States and Canada have a common interest, to be dealt with by a joint commission. It is to be hoped that something of this kind may belong to the history of the year upon which we are entering.

In Mexico

Turning to the countries lying to the and Central southward, we do not find it altogether America. easy to distinguish important facts and permanent tendencies from the multitude of occurrences that obscure and confuse the main outlines of the situation. As to Mexico, every added year of the personal rule of President Diaz improves the condition of the country. The joint. commission engaged upon the delimitation of the boundary between the United States and Mexico has been allowed to take another year, so that its finished work will belong to 1898. The boundary troubles with Guatemala having been settled, Mexico enters upon the year 1898 more free, perhaps, from international disputes and complications than any other country in the world. In Cen

tral America, the great task of the past year has been the endeavor to federalize the series of small republics so as to constitute the "Greater Republic of Central America." The experiment seems to be in a state of arrested development. In two affairs that concern also the great outside world the Central Americans are just now especially interested. One is the departure from New York of President McKinley's new commission of engineers to make a final report on the Nicaragua Canal, and the other is the recent concession to an English company, under very peculiar circum-. stances, of railway rights and other important privileges along the route of the canal, in apparent conflict with the concessions held by the American Canal Company. Looking still further south, one finds the Panama Canal enterprise

undergoing reorganization, with some prospect, though not a brilliant one, that the great enterprise may be resumed and pushed to completion.

The Turn of the Year in

South America.

The republic of Venezuela is to be congratulated upon two things-first, the complete success of the demand made on its behalf by the United States for the arbitration of the boundary dispute on the frontier of British Guiana- -a matter that is likely to be brought to the point of a decision within the coming year; and second, upon an increased orderliness in domestic politics, as shown in a peaceful and comparatively honest presidential election. As for Brazil, the influence of the submission of the Venezuela-Guiana boundary dispute to arbitration has had the effect to make it comparatively easy for the great Portuguese

PRESIDENT ANDRADE, OF VFNEZUELA,

speaking republic to secure the consent of France to a settlement by arbitration of the long-pending and serious dispute touching the boundary line. between French Guiana and Brazil. The past year has seen a struggle under exceedingly interesting and novel conditions against a revolution in the interior of Brazil, chiefly in the State of Bahia, which had its origin in the teachings of a fanatical priest named Antonio Maciel. cent attack upon the life of the president of the republic, with various revolutionary symptoms at Rio Janeiro, led to the consent by Congress that the executive should proclaim military rule for a period of thirty days. period of thirty days. President Moraes will probably have restored order by the beginning of

A re

the new year. A presidential election is soon to be held. The Argentine has entered upon a period of financial recuperation; Uruguay has disarmed a rebellion by granting to the rebels all that they asked; Chili is occupied with a transAndes railway project and other business undertakings, and was, when we went to press, in the midst of a serious cabinet crisis. Bolivia and Peru carry their chronic anxieties into the new year.

England's

Problems.

The past year has been made notable in Pending England by the great prominence given to the celebration of the queen's sixtieth year on the throne. In domestic legislation the two principal measures brought to a completion were the Employers' Liability Act, which is in the line of progress, and the measure giving public aid to denominational schools, which is reactionary. As an offset to this school policy adopted by Parliament is to

be mentioned the recent election of a new school board for London in which the clerical party, hitherto in the majority, was completely routed. Various measures promised for the improvement of agriculture, industry, and gov ernment in Ireland have not been brought to an issue, and belong to the questions inherited by the new year. A part of the penalty that the England of 1897 had to pay for the trouble with the Transvaal caused by the Jameson raid of a little more than a year previous was the continuance of the long and unprofitable Parliamentary inquiry. Meanwhile the British Colonial Office has had to deal with plenty of other African questions, including the dispute with the French touching respective spheres of influence in Central West Africa, the advance upon Khartum of the expedition that will undoubtedly in the year 1898 reconquer the Soudan, and the reorganization of the new British territory called Rhodesia. The railroad from Capetown to Buluwayo. with other lines now building, makes South Africa surely British.

A Troublous Year

in India.

But it is in India that the British imperial authorities have had the most to contend with during the past year. At the beginning of 1897 the famine and the plague were making terrible havoc in great regions of dense population, and it is probable that, as the direct or indirect result of these two calamitous visitations, many millions of people have perished. The return of a normal rainfall, with the resulting improvement in crops, has mitigated the severity of the famine, and the measures for the supply of emergency relief have for the most part been discontinued. But the bubonic plague, unhappily, has not ceased its ravages, and is invading fresh districts. In the more recent news from India the famine and the plague have been almost entirely ignored by reason of the superior interest that the outside world has felt in the progress of the campaign against the tribesmen on the north

western frontier. It had been considered at first that the so-called punitive expedition would have very little difficulty in putting down the rebellious highlanders who had interfered with British roadbuilding and the planting of military stations on the route to Chitral. But the campaign has grown to the proportions of one of the most serious minor wars that England has waged in many years. The winters are sften extremely severe in those regions of high altitude near the peak of "the roof of the world," and it is to be feared that as much harm may befall the British and Indian troops by reason of the difficulty of transporting supplies through the snow-bound passes as from the bullets of the repeating rifles with which the tribesmen seem to be so well armed.

Germany's Chinese Venture.

The most striking event of the year 1897, in the struggle of the European powers for outlying possessions, will probably turn out to have been the action of Germany in landing troops on the coast of China late in the month of November. The event surprised the whole world. At first it seemed to be nothing more than it pretended to be-namely, a prompt measure for the collection of an indemnity on account of the murder of two German missionaries. But it quickly transpired that the missionaries formed merely a convenient excuse. The German Government had come to the conclusion that the French advance by way of Tonquin and the Russian advance by way of Manchuria must indicate that the partition of China was not to be long delayed; and if Germany was to participate in the grand spoliation she must have a starting-point and a foothold. The game has been played boldly, brilliantly, and with complete success. China has already conceded to Germany the permanent occupation of the port of Kaio Chau, including the fortifications, with land immediately surrounding to the extent of about four hundred square miles.

Other

A CHINESE VERSION OF MARY STUART." LORD BURLEIGH (to the German Leicester): "My lord, these missionaries have been killed very conveniently for you."-From Der Floh (Vienna).

the international affairs of the continent, and has done a great deal of traveling, having made notable visits to the Czar in Russia, and to the Emperor Francis Joseph in Hungary, while also meeting and entertaining the King of Italy. Besides his constant efforts to maintain and strengthen the Triple Alliance, it is believed that the Emperor William has reached some kind of an understanding with the Sultan of Turkey for the rendering of mutual military aid, if needed, against Russia. Prince Hohenlohe has continued as Chancellor of the German empire, although there has been constant talk of a cabinet reorganization which would include the retirement of that statesman.

How It

The republic of France, with Félix Fares with Faure as president, Félix Jules Meline as prime minister, and Gabriel Hanotaux as minister of foreign affairs, has given an unusual exhibition of governmental stability during 1897. The average life of a French cabinet is about six months; but the one now in office assumed responsibility on April 30, 1896. The visit of the President to Russia and the plain avowal of the alliance was the great event of the year. In domestic affairs, the prepara

tion for the exposition of the year 1900 has been a leading topic; but it has been overshadowed by the extraordinary agitation raised late in the year over the question whether or not Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was convicted in 1894, by a military tribunal, on the charge of