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aspirations which have slowly been assuming form as the country has advanced in material and moral progress. Such conduct as that of the Spanish officials in the government of Cuba could not be tolerated by a powerful nation like the United States. Now, the point is that the American people are beginning to know how powerful they are, and with this knowledge its eager spirit grows impatient of incompetence and cruelty as not necessary to the government of intelligent beings.

Such, being the cause, we may reasonably ask, what of the effect of the war with Spain? In the event of the further progress of this sentiment the question is inevitable: Will the United States maintain a single-handed position (Athanasius contra mundum); or make formal alliances with other great nations for mutual protection, and, if so, with what nation? At least one Englishman, as long ago as 1876 (Sir Charles W. Dilke), anticipated this contingency. (See his "Problems of Greater Britain.")

On this point, it is necessary to observe that it is at present only a contingency, the possession of the Philippine Islands. notwithstanding. For it must not be supposed that there are not powerful spirits in and out of Congress who oppose, with all the strength of settled conviction, any modification of the theory of "splendid isolation" as America's safest policy. Ex-President Cleveland, not to mention others, is of this mind. Moreover, the people who make war and unmake policy in this country have not yet seriously accepted their responsibility in this matter. Mr. Henry Norman, of the London "Chronicle," is correct in describing the American people as a people of second thoughts; and the sober second thought of the people will not permit the discontinuance of any of the old ideals; there will be no unadvised innovation, nor will there be any retrograde movement. I look rather for a summation of the old and new ideals of the nationa development of the national life in a more objective and positive way than hitherto; a way that enters into the stream of life outside America. All the newspapers and magazines, therefore, which have put forth articles advocating even an Anglo-American alliance are merely educative. Certainly they are premature. Only one thing seems clearly

accepted and that is, that the war with Spain is a departure, and that we shall, in due time, have to consider what it all means. Patriotism of the new kind already described, inspired the one and I will take care of the other. An alliance, in other words, is a contingency of the situation, growing out of the fact that the national life of the United States is to develop in the future, in connection, in all probability, with the great nations of the earth.

On the other hand, it is only right to say that all the best unofficial opinion in this country tends to the idea that the only logical candidate, in case an alliance or an understanding is reached, is England. Various lines of thought, of a primary and secondary character, tend to this conclusion. I may mention England's endorsement of the war, and her maintenance of a strict neutrality involving coal as contraband of war, as one of the principal. It is assumed on this side the Atlantic that England's neutrality rested on a positive friendliness for her kith and kin, because the declaration of her neutral position came after the spontaneous outburst of feeling of sympathy on the occasion of the loss of the "Maine." If England be strict in maintaining her resolutions and swift to punish any infringement of them, this will be the best way of securing peace and the permanent gratitude of this nation. England's statesmen, too, have spoken words which will not be lost. The New York "Sun » published the report of a speech of Lord Salisbury, in which he characterized the present war as inspired by "exalted philanthropy." If he said that, and believes it in his heart, he may be certain of America's genuine "thank you." At least no other nation has, through her official chiefs, spoken in such a high vein. And the idea that "blood is thicker than water is not without its influence just now; though this should not be overestimated, because, as the reader knows, the real number of people of purely AngloSaxon origin in this country is comparatively small. There is no "blood" here in the sense of a pure Anglo-Saxon race; but, as I have pointed out above, the new nationalism rests on the amalgamation of all the races, whose spirit is a broad cosmopolitanism based on equality and work. We shall have to go further west, to Australasia, to find the counterpart of

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time blood will tell. It is a matter of fact that the best people of the original stock, who do most of the solid thinking and planning for the rest, are of AngloSaxon origin. The commanders, who have covered themselves with glory in the naval part of the present war, are of English descent, and many incidents have happened to show that up-to-date Americanism is as responsive as ever to blood; that the best traditions of the two countries have much in common; so much, indeed, as to render permanent disagreement next to impossible.

But, of course, it is the question of the dominant influence of the Pacific Ocean, as this turns at present on the partition of China, that is the drawing card between the two nations. Commercial interest is the most powerful factor drawing England and the United States to a mutual understanding. No one in the United States is so blind as to believe that any other competitor need be feared by her but England; and vice versa. Both, therefore, have the same occasion in maintaining open ports for trade in the Pacific, viz., as outlets for their manufactures and food products. Hitherto, America has been satisfied if her exports have more than counterbalanced her imports, if her Pacific trade has left her with a credit in her favor. And this, it is well known, she has succeeded in doing with comparative ease. Indeed, figures show that her influence is steadily increasing proportionately at a greater rate than that of any other country. But, aside from this, America needs new fields of endeavor, and, inasmuch as she cannot secure them alone, she must seek a nation like-minded who will " go halves » and help. It is one of the master strokes of recent British foreign policy that Great Britain has been pledged to a policy with which the United States has an instinctive sympathy. This may be chance, or it may be design. Whichever it is, the identity of principle in this case cannot fail to exert a wholesome and unifying power over the counsels of the near future. If the dominant influence of the Pacific is to be Anglo-Saxon, it may be true that Russia, France, and Germany will grind their teeth with rage, but no one will question the survival of the right in the precipitous fever of land-grabbing that is going on just now in China. There is something pathetic and sublime in the thought of

England, or English people, and Americans uniting in defence of their common interest, which, though immediately commercial in the Pacific, must also be social and political, as well, in the end. Necessity would not make us strange bed-fellows in this case.

To this must be added the influence of identity of language. Business will secure the dominance of the English language, and the Americans have a good-natured contempt for any language but the English. A man need not know Greek and Latin, French or German, in order to be a cultured man in America. Harvard University has adopted the elective system entirely in its curriculum. English is the language every emigrant, not English-speaking, must learn if he would live in this country. But behind this fact, behind our common language, is the common respect felt for the ideals which this language stands for. This, of itself, would incline the people of this country, in an hour of need, to look to England for friends. Commercially, it is also natural that language should be a uniting influence. Mere numbers tell, and there is something inspiring in the thought of nearly 200,000,000 of people speaking the same language and sharing similar ideals. In the deeper concerns of a nation nothing is so important as unity of idea resting upon similarity of language. It would be an interesting question to inquire how far the present touchy condition of Austro-Hungarian politics was due to the variety of race ideals and languages or dialects in which the affairs of state are carried on. German is still the language of exact learning, as was Greek in the ancient world; but it is becoming less and less so, as English-speaking peoples become more and more aware of problems which are not purely commercial. If, therefore, as Max Müller holds, language and thought are inseparable, an immense weight of tradition is inclining the United States and England towards each other. An easily adaptable tongue is not to be despised in settling momentous issues.

One of the ideas preserved by our common heritage, which is operating to unite the two nations in friendlier bonds, is that of self-government. The English people are the only people who have shown any decided gift for individual liberty, or a disposition to give freedom to dependent

races. In America, close watch has been kept on England's treatment of her colonies in this respect, and I need hardly say that much satisfaction has been caused by the situation. It is not forgotten that England liberated her slaves twenty years before America and without a wasting war. In her administration of India and in the wise treatment of the colonies of Canada and Australia, England has shown that her colonization and conquest rest on self-government. Politically, nothing draws America to England more than this idea, because self-government is also the principle of the American commonwealth. It has sometimes been represented that England's activity in the world has been inspired by love of conquest. In the late Venezuela dispute a great deal was said along this line. But an appeal to the actual status of undisputed territories has shown that England not only conquers territory, but also civilizes and fits for independence and self-government. For this reason, half philosophical and half political, it is found that America and England are fitted for international operations on a scale hitherto undreamed of, as no other nations are. For other nations have at no time shown such sustained enthusiasm for political and social liberty, or anything comparing with the success of England as the greatest civilizing nation in the world's history. This prestige is shared, at any rate through the history of the idea, by the United States. We all see now that there is as much self-government in Canada as in the United States, and that England herself is a virtual democracy.

But this is only another way of saying that the English people are justice loving people. This reason penetrates deeper than any other into the present situation as it affects England and America. The estimate of England has too often been formed on the basis of the third-class officials whom she sends out to the various foreign ports of the world. Unfortunately, the official class is a very unsatisfactory one for a travelling American to judge by. In his treatment of the person of servants, the British official is often brutal and insulting. His instinct of justice is marred by a self-consciousness which has little that resembles fair dealing. But outside the official class, among the great bulk of the people, and among the aristocracy, in Great Britain, the impression

prevails here that the love of justice is greater than the love of life. Beecher succeeded in converting the prejudiced people of England in the time of the Civil War, discovering that the flunky class had held the red rag before the eyes of the people and so blinded them for a season. So in the present day, an American traveller who at first was prejudiced soon became convinced of the attitude of the people, when in England. Now, this is an important ingredient of the present situation. England loves justice and will always act from the motive of justice as far as she knows. America, in like manner, loves justice. With what nation, therefore, can she be friendly, in the deepest sense, but that one with which she has most moral sympathy?

On

If the present situation do not yield the results warranted in view of these considerations, it will be for two reasons. the one hand, it will be because the time is not ripe for any concrete embodiment of a friendship which has always existed in a distant sense. Sentiment in America, as well as in England, may not be mature enough. The people of the two countries may not ratify what the leaders have labored to bring about. But, deeper than this, I believe the principal obstacle to a formal agreement to be the fact that, politically, there is still a radical difference between England and America; the one being a monarchy, the other a republic. If England were a republic, with the other inducements I have mentioned, America would not hesitate. There is an inveterate feeling that an hereditary monarchy and House of Lords are an anacronism in these days, and that an enlightened nation should get rid of them. There is this logical flaw in the situation, therefore, which might operate against a formal alliance. But no reason exists against the increase of friendliness. Providence too plainly favors the formation of closer bonds between these two nations, and when this is the case, it is the part of all good and sagacious men to understand and act, not carp and criticise, about minor matters.

HENRY DAVIES, Ph. D.

Those who are given to postage stamp collecting will be interested in knowing that Spain has just issued a new series of postage and war-tax stamps, of various denominations. A similar issue has also appeared in Porto Rico.

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Or, A CENTRAL AMERICAN REPUBLIC OF TO-DAY

F the five Central American republics Guatemala contains forty-four per cent. of the entire population, although its area is only one-fourth of the whole. It is the second of these states in size, being slightly exceeded in area by Nicaragua, and it is almost exactly as large as North Carolina. These statements are based upon the estimates of geographers, for in all Latin America there has never been an official survey of a single country, and the government statistics are universally unreliable. However, the truth is got at approximately, so that the relative importance of each country may be fairly

seen.

Guatemala is the most northern of the Central American Republics, and has the Mexican states of Chiapas and Campeachy on the north, while Honduras and Salvador bound it on the southeast. It is 280 miles along the 90th meridian from the northern boundary to the mouth of the Paz River at the extreme south. From the mouth of the Motagua on the Gulf of Honduras to the most western point on the Sierra Madre is 260 miles in a direct line. In a rough way the country resembles half a dumb-bell, the shank comprising the northern department of Peten, the eastern knob lying between British Honduras and the Republic of Honduras, the western between Chiapas and the Pacific Ocean.

There is the greatest imaginable difference between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Although it is only fifty miles from the mouth of the Sarstoon, a river that divides Guatemala from British Honduras on the south to the most southeastern outlet of the Motagua on the confines of Honduras Republic, yet the sinuosities of the coast that skirt the Gulf of Amatique and adjacent seas are reckoned to extend to 115 miles. On this shore open great valleys separated by mountain ranges whose spurs come to the sea, and in which run navigable and large rivers.

Vessels penetrate the Sarstoon to the falls of Gracias a Dios, at which point the west line of British Honduras trends due north. The Sierra de Santa Cruz intervenes between this valley and the Izabal basin wherein lies the largest lake of Guatemala. Lake

Izabal is fifty-eight miles long and twelve miles wide. Its waters reach the gulf through the river Dulce, a navigable stream somewhat obstructed by a bar at its mouth. The lake receives the Polochic River with the waters of its affluent, the Cahabon, and thus a water-course is provided for boats to ascend to Panzos, 120 miles in the interior. Crossing the divide southward, formed by low spurs of the Sierra de las Minas, and the great valley of the Motagua is reached, the most important river in the republic. Its sources are in the highlands of Guatemala Department and a railway ascends the valley from Puerto Barrios 140 miles to within 75 miles of the capital of the country. Ninety miles from the mouth of the river is the inland port of Gualan where there is considerable trade. The coast lands are low and behind them are dense virgin forests. They are in the hot and rainy region, lying in the path of the trade winds, which are the great breeders of rain in the tropics.

There are more seaports on the Atlantic than on the Pacific coast, and yet the heaviest commerce is carried on through the poor and exposed harbors on the west. This is due to the facts that the population is denser in the south of Guatemala, and that railway communications are more abundant, while steamer service is more regular. The Atlantic ports are Livingston at the mouth of the Dulce River, and Santo Tomas and Puerto Barrios on a bay which forms the southern extremity of the Gulf of Amatique. There are steamers, scheduled to sail between New York and Livingston, and there is an intermittent service between these Atlantic ports and New Orleans and Galveston, as well as Europe, especially in the harvest season. In addition there are the inland ports of Panzos on the Polochic River, Izabal on the south shore of the lake of the same name, and Gualan well up the Motagua.

The Pacific coast comprises a belt of land from forty to fifty miles wide lying at the foot of the great rampart known as the Cordillera de los Andes. These mountains are a link in the great Andean chain that skirts the Pacific throughout the length of the American continents,

and bears a score of different names at different points. Thus it is called the Sierra Madre in northwestern Guatemala, Sierra de las Nubes near the capital, while a spur of the range that separates Guatemala from Honduras is known as the Sierra de Copan. These mountains reach an altitude of from 7,000 to 13,900 feet in the volcano of Fuego near the capital. It is an eruptive chain, and twenty-eight volcanic peaks lying in its range are enumerated, of which a halfdozen are still active. On the southern

slopes of these mountains the rivers are numerous, short, and turbulent. Only one is navigable, the Michatoya, somewhat east of San José, and then only for ten or twelve miles.

The Pacific coast lands are covered with alluvium, washed down from the mountains, and here there is a dry season, when the north wind prevails during our winter and spring. Southwest winds here bring on the rains, which are often very tempestuous. The margin of the coast is broken by few indentations, and is characterized by swamps and lagoons, where salt-makers and fishermen manage in a dreary way to withstand the miasmatic agues of a hot and humid climate.

Three ports, Ocos in the extreme northwest; Champerico, twenty-five miles down the coast, near the mouth of the Samala River; and San José, nearly south from the capital, are regularly visited three times a month by steamers of the Pacific mail line plying between San Francisco and Panama, as well as by Panama coasting steamers. Two German lines from Hamburg come hither at irregular intervals, passing through the Straits of Magellan, and making the voyage in about fifty days. These ports are but little more than open roadsteads, and ships lie in the open a mile away to discharge and receive passengers and freight. The towns have but scant population, and are wretched places in construction and for healthfulness.

Yet these places are the chief seats of international commerce. This is primarily due to the regular calls of the Pacific mail steamers. Indeed, it is notable how the trade of all Central American States has been influenced by the systematic traffic service that sprang up on the Pacific after the discovery of gold in California and has been continued ever since. Moreover, throughout Central America

the bulk of the population is distributed along the mountains and in the valleys of the West, partly for climatic reasons, and partly as successors to the aboriginal inhabitants whom the Spaniards despoiled. The watershed of the whole country is along the Andean chain which follows the Pacific Coast. The Atlantic versant is a broad stretch of country descending gradually eastward, and it constitutes, with its lower lands, dense forests and continuous rains, the wilderness of the entire country. Only within recent years has attention been given to the capabilities of these eastern regions, and the trade of these republics on the Atlantic is largely due to the enterprise of the merchants of the United States.

Regular steamship service gave rise to internal improvements. The most important of these by far are the narrow, three-feet gauge railroads. Such a road runs from San José, 74%1⁄2 miles to the city of Guatemala. Branches of this road run to Iztapa and Patulu, both on the west of the main line, and they penetrate a rich coffee and sugar district. Another like road, 41 miles long, connects Champerico with San Felipe on the San Luis River and has the same kind of trade as the San José line. The coffee trade has also led to the construction of a road in the east thirty miles long from Panzos on the Polochic to Tucuru, in order to bring the produce of the intervening plantations to Livingston. The railways now mentioned, comprising together 320 miles, are all the improvements of this sort now existing in Guatemala. It will be seen that the most important of them contribute to the trade of the Pacific ports, whose exports are from ten to twelve times as great as that of Livingston on the Atlantic.

The longest and mightiest river of Guatemala runs unteazed by Guatemalan boats through Mexico to the Bay of Campeachy on the Gulf of Mexico. It is the Usumacinta and it forms the boundary line between the Republic and the Mexican State of Chiapas. In Mexico it bears the name of Tabasco and its length is put down at 1,250 miles. Its tributaries from Guatemala are the large streams, San Pedro on the north, Rio de la Pasion, the Chixoy, also called the Salinas and the Negro, which is the main stream, and the Lacandon. All these streams are navigable well into the Departments of

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