possible; for the House was not then in session and would not be, unless specially summoned, until the next fall. As a result of this delay, Cuba suffered great business depression, discontent and sedition arose-which was precisely what many of the American opponents of the treaty wanted-and affairs became so gravely menacing that the President on November 9 called the House of Representatives as well as the Senate together in special session, and sent in a message vigorously urging the immediate approval of the treaty. Ten days later it was approved by the House, by a vote of 335 to 21. The Senate, although it had passed the treaty in March, was now called upon to do so again, but resisted and delayed in every possible way until December 16, when at last it grudgingly approved it.

Although the Platt Amendment had been enacted by our Congress, and had been added to the Cuban constitution, it was still necessary, according to its own terms, for it to be incorporated in a treaty between the two governments. Such a treaty was concluded on May 22, 1903, and ratifications of it were exchanged on July 1, 1904. Meantime, under the provisions of the amendment, the United States had already leased from the Cuban government suitable areas for naval stations at Bahia Honda, on the northwestern coast of Cuba, and at Guantanamo, on the southeastern coast. These locations were selected with a view, not so much to using them as bases from which to intervene in Cuban affairs, as some Cubans had feared, as to their utility for general strategic purposes in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, especially with reference to the protection of Porto Rico and the Isthmian Canal, upon which latter enterprise the Government was already intent.

Under the conditions which were thus established, Cuba enjoyed a fine measure of material prosperity, and for a short time seemed to be securely started upon an autonomous career. But it was not long before the effects of years of revolutionary disturbances and lack of experience in or even appreciation of selfgovernment made themselves painfully and ominously apparent. The congress refused to enact essential laws. The general good was lost sight of in the indulgence of factional animosities and sordid ambitions. There is reason for believing that the situation was aggravated by the insidious machinations of Americans,

who conceived it to be to their potential advantage to defeat the experiment of self-government in Cuba and to force American intervention and ultimate annexation. In 1906 Estrada Palma was reëlected president of Cuba, and a little later, in August of that year, pretending that his election had been dishonestly effected, the abhorrent influences already described brought about a rebellion against his government. On September 8 the situation had become so serious that President Palma asked for American help, and in consequence President Roosevelt was constrained to send the secretary of war, William H. Taft, and the assistant secretary of state, Robert Bacon, to Havana as peacemakers. This was not yet intervention and it was hoped that that extreme step could be avoided. "Our intervention will only come," wrote Roosevelt to the Cuban minister to the United States, Gonzalo de Quesada, "if Cuba herself shows that she has fallen into the insurrectionary habit, that she lacks the self-restraint necessary to secure peaceful self-government, and that her contending factions have plunged the country into anarchy." The mission of Messrs. Taft and Bacon proved unavailing. Estrada Palma resigned the presidency in despair. When the time set for the assembling of the Cuban congress arrived, members of that body refused to meet in sufficient numbers to form a quorum. Thus the island was left without a government. In this crisis, Taft at once, on September 29, assumed control and proclaimed the establishment of a provisional American government for the maintenance of order and the protection of life and property; as authorized by the Platt Amendment. In his proclamation he said: "The provisional government will be maintained only long enough to restore order, peace, and public confidence, and then to hold such elections as may be necessary to determine on those persons upon whom the permanent government of the republic should devolve." A body of American troops was sent to the island. Taft remained there as provisional governor until October 3, when he was succeeded by Charles E. Magoon. The latter had had much invaluable experience at Panama, as governor of the Canal Zone and as minister to Panama, and was admirably fitted to deal with the trying problems which confronted him in Cuba. He addressed himself to the task with diplomatic discretion but also with energy and reso

lution. First of all a census was taken, as a necessary preliminary to the holding of a fair election. An advisory commission, composed of three Americans, four Cuban Conservatives and four Cuban Liberals, under Magoon's direction drafted an electoral law, a municipal law, a judicial law, and a civil service law. These were imperatively needed for the very foundations of government in the island, but they were laws which the Cuban Congress had stubbornly refused to enact.

With these preparations, elections were held on August 1 and November 14, 1908, in an orderly fashion, and were participated in, the former by about 60 and the latter by nearly 80 per cent. of the registered voters. General José Miguel Gomez was chosen president. These results being satisfactory, and the island having become thoroughly pacified, withdrawal of the American troops was begun on January 1, 1909. The Cuban Congress assembled on January 23 and went to work in a businesslike and patriotic manner, evidently having learned and profited from the severe lessons of the preceding two years; and on January 28 Mr. Magoon formally turned over the government of the island to President Gomez and his associates, and the second American occupation of Cuba was ended.

The question of the status of the Isle of Pines has not been definitively answered, but the island is left in the possession of Cuba, where it properly belongs. A decision of the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that, in the matter of customs duties, it must be treated as a part of the Republic of Cuba. A treaty making the same declaration was negotiated in 1908, but failed of ratification by the United States Senate. But subsequent efforts by American speculators to have the island seized and annexed by this country have been ignored by the Government, and the progress of time makes the success of any such scheme increasingly improbable.

D

XXXIII

LATER RELATIONS WITH THE FAR EAST

URING the period of the Spanish war, American interests

in China were gravely impaired and American treaty rights were flouted by various European powers, which seized with avidity upon the opportunity which they thought was then presented to them to get rid of the feared and hated American commercial rivalry in China and to partition that vast and opulent empire among themselves. The leaders in this movement were Germany and Russia. They had in 1895 been foremost in intervening to deny to Japan the legitimate fruits of her victory over China, and now, in 1897, their real purpose in doing so was disclosed. Japan had aimed to break down the exclusive policy of China and to open that empire more freely to the trade and travel of the world; seeking for herself, however, no special privileges, but guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities to all nations. For herself she would take only a limited piece of Chinese territory, and it she would open to all. The European powers exactly reversed that policy. They seized upon pieces of China for their own, in which they would have exclusive rights over all other nations, and they dictated treaties and concessions under which a great part of the Chinese Empire would be closed more strictly than ever before against all nations but themselves.

Germany led the way. A couple of German missionaries had been killed in China, and reparation was not forthcoming as promptly as was demanded. The German emperor thereupon made a flamboyant and melodramatic speech, practically proclaiming a "holy war" against China, and despatched a naval and military expedition, under the command of his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, on an errand of vengeance and spoliation. This expedition in November, 1897, seized the city and port of Kiao-chau and the surrounding territory, and dictated

a treaty, which the Chinese government was not strong enough to refuse, under which Kiao-chau was "leased" to Germany for ninety-nine years and German influence was made paramount, with special and exclusive privileges over all other nations, throughout most of the province of Shantung. Following closely upon these acts, at a distance of only a few days, Russia sent a fleet to Port Arthur, took possession of that place, and dietated a "lease" of it and of the Regent's Sword peninsula, under which that region would become her own to the exclusion of all others powers, and she would thus dominate the whole of Manchuria. Thus two of the most important provinces of China, in which American commercial interests were particularly great, and which commanded respectively the southern and northern shores of the Gulf of Pe-Chi-li and the approaches to the Chinese imperial capital, were practically annexed by these two powers, American treaty rights in them were annulled, and any further American commerce with them was practically prohibited.

A little later, in 1898, Great Britain seized and "leased" the port of Wei-hai-wei, on the Shantung Peninsula, and Mirs Bay, at Hongkong, and France took similar action at Kwang-chau, in southeastern China. In addition to these operations, vast concessions for railroad building, opening of mines, establishment of industries, etc., were exacted by the European powers from China, covering the most important parts of the empire and threatening the complete exclusion of the United States therefrom. All these things were in flagrant violation not only of the moral principles which the powers had professed to uphold in China but equally of the legal rights of the United States under the "most favored nation" clause of existing treaties. Just as Napoleon III had sought the conquest of Mexico while the United States was engaged in the Civil War, so this attempt at the partition of China to the prejudice and sacrifice of American rights was shrewdly made at the time when this country was obviously about to enter upon a war with Spain which would engage the entire attention of its navy for an indefinite period, and it was pushed to its fullest extent while we were actually involved in that struggle.

Had the hands of the United States been free, some action