tives of self-interest, but the habit of evening shopping was not without reason in a country where the heat of the midday and of the afternoon causes almost a suspension of trade. Ultimately the shops were ordered closed nights and Sundays after ten o'clock in the morning, and the closing was enforced by General Ludlow as military governor of Habana. A few weeks or months of the enforced experiment will hardly furnish sufficient basis for complacent congratulation about the observance of an Anglo-Saxon Sunday or a New England Sabbath in a Latin community. Left to itself, the agitation would probably have resulted in a compromise arrangement. Under military pressure there could be no compromise. When civil authority becomes supreme it will be time enough to judge of the experiment. Meantime the Anglo-Saxon Sunday should not be taken in too liberal a sense.

There are other customs which in the end would be better regulated by local regulations than by the military power of the United States. In a previous chapter I have given the reason for believing that the bullfight is a dead institution-for this generation at least. If it were not so its formal prohibition by the American Governor-General of the island would not be apt to change the nature of the people who delighted in it.

In the old days the Governor-General laid down ironclad regulations for the cocking-mains. By a decree promulgated in February, 1882, they were only permitted on Sundays, Church holidays of two crosses, and the day fixed in each town or village for the celebration of its patron saint. Subsequent dispositions of the Governor-General prohibited rival cocking-mains on the

same day; required the owners of the game fowls to alternate the lidias, or exhibitions, and reaffirmed the prohibition on other than Sundays and the Church holidays which were specified. The idea was not to permit the sport to be held on regular working days because it would interfere with the industry of the laboring population.

Probably in its effort to free itself from the past abuses the Catholic Church will exert its moral influence against Sundays and saints' days as the occasion for cocking-mains and similar sports. This influence is also likely to be exerted against the amusement on any day of the year. With such encouragement, local public sentiment might be depended on to wean the people gradually from their liking for these sports, so that municipal regulations could be enacted and enforced. But the circumstances in Cuba are not so exceptional as to require the supreme military power of the island to issue edicts regarding this sport and similar amusements grounded in habits and customs because the customs are not in conformity with American notions. A proclamation against dog-fights by the governor of a great State such as New York or Illinois would be no more absurd.

There is extant the decree of a Spanish Captain-General prescribing the manner in which the legs of chickens should be tied when they were carried to market. The purpose was a humane one. If the highest military authority under American occupation is to be concerned with regulating the amusements and customs of the people it might with justice be asked to reform the customs of marketing and revive this humane decree, Against

this it may be urged that police regulations should be sufficient. So they should be in innumerable other matters which were taken up by the higher authorities for regulation and enforcement under military decree. It is as if Connecticut were to regulate the habits of California, or Montana to prescribe the usages of Massachusetts.

These comments are made almost with apology for their triviality, but this tendency towards sumptuary and arbitrary regulation of the customs of a different people became a feature of the power exerted by the American authorities. It could not, therefore, be ignored. Errors of this kind may be made, yet they do not affect the American military control in its broadest sense. The example of official integrity and of earnest effort in good administration remains. When the military trusteeship ends it will be a creditable ending, with results to show which will justify the confidence of the American people.

CHAPTER XVII

POLITICAL APTITUDES

Training for Constructive Government-Autonomy as an Education -Growth of Popular Element-Germs of Party OrganizationDevelopment of Clubs-Caucus and Primary-Influence of the Newspapers-Responsiveness of Country People to Good Leadership-Regionalism Again-Santiago and Puerto PríncipeGrowth of Public Opinion-Factions and Groups Cuban Weakness in Administration-Dreamers in the Custom Houses -Patterning the Institutions of the United States-Query Regarding Respect for Authority-Necessity of a Trial-What Constitutes a State-Future Commonwealth.

MECHANICAL aptitudes are usually inherited. Political aptitudes may be either acquired or inherited. Propensity for revolution may exist without a grasp of the fundamental principles of free government.

Of the Cuban people as a people, it cannot be said that they have an inheritance of political aptitudes from their grandfathers, and atavism in political government is a phenomenon not to be expected, because the right use of civil liberty is a growth and not a miracle. When so vast a majority of the human race has not advanced far enough in civilization to find chairs either a necessity or a luxury, it should not cause surprise that a people whose habitation is the border tropics cannot boast of inherited disposition for constructive government. What they do have is the acquired aptitude. This is another way of saying that their training

has begun. The extent to which it has progressed and the influences affecting it may be studied.

From the knowledge of what has gone we gain the knowledge of what remains. In brief compass of a few chapters the autonomist agitation and régime were narrated chronologically as an expisode of Spanish history in the Antilles. From that narration the idea may be had of the degree to which the movement served the purpose of political education. The basis of free institutions is free discussion. Under the limitations of free print and free speech imposed by the Spanish dominion, this basis could not be a broad one. But Spanish Captain-Generals had one quality that was not bad. While they occasionally deported journalists and suppressed journals whose outspokenness was uncomfortable to the Government, they were tolerant of abstract discussions of political principles. Liberty in the abstract, the theoretical bases of civil government, were beyond their ken or care, and discussion on this line was treated with contempt. It was only when abuses and misgovernment were attacked specifically that the iron hand was shown.

These conditions strengthened a natural disposition towards speculative discussion, and speculative political philosophy forms a leading part in the programme of all the political leaders in Cuba. But in the days of repression, under its disguise real progress was made to a greater degree than was known. The terms "meeting," "“mass meeting," "self-government," "home rule," had no equivalent in the Castilian language. Autonomy was not the translation of either self-government or home rule. That all these terms were incorporated into