it extraordinary importance for the future his tory of the world. As the London "Times" rightly says, "Whatever the issue, the proposal must forthwith be discussed in a practical spirit by practical statesmen of all civilized nations. No wise man will pretend that, even if this is all, it is little for the Czar to have accomplished." English papers, as might be expected, are quite alive to the practical difficulties in the way of universal peace, and peculiarly quick to suspect that the Czar's proposition has some special significance as relating to the present position of affairs in China and to England's great efforts to increase her naval strength. One English paper, for instance, suggests that the carrying out of universal disarmament would be of great disadvantage to England as compared with Russia, because the formation of a great army could be accomplished in two or three years, while such a fleet as England possesses could not, if allowed to fall into disuse, be restored in less than from ten to twenty years. Stated in brief, the proposition of the Czar is an invitation to all the nations which have representatives in St. Petersburg to send delegates to a Conference which would-to use the Czar's words "converge in one powerful focus the efforts of the States which are sincerely seeking to make the great conception of universal peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord. It would at the same time cement an agreement by a corporate consecration of the principles of equity and right, on which rest the security of States and the welfare of the peoples." The Czar declares that he considers the present moment favorable for seeking, by international discussion, to secure to all peoples the benefits of real and durable peace. He rightly points out that the ultimate object of great international alliances has been to guarantee peace, and that financial problems, labor problems, problems connected with the investment of capital, national culture, and wealth production, are all, to a large degree, paralyzed by the enormous military armaments of our day. It is generally understood that the Czar personally has long entertained a feeling of strong disapproval of the military burden under which Europe is almost prostrated; and this, more than most state papers, may be taken to express the Czar's personal views and wishes. A Conference of some kind will probably result; what will be its issue it is now im

possible to conjecture, but the mere fact of such a movement proceeding from such a source cannot but hasten the day when reason and international law will take their rightful places as supreme over brute force.

The West Indies

Mr. Chamberlain has elaborated a scheme for rescuing the West Indian colonies of Great Britain from the industrial ruin which has threatened them for some time. Jamaica and the smaller islands of the group have been almost impoverished by reason of the inability of their main industry, sugar production, to compete with the bounty fed sugar of Continental Europe. Some time ago we stated the conclusions reached by the Royal Commission appointed to investigate the facts. Mr. Chamberlain's plan largely adopts the suggestions of the Commission, although in some particulars he has taken his own line of action. In supporting the Parliamentary vote in aid of the colonies he took broader ground than was anticipated, emphasizing the Imperial duty of protecting and developing them, and laying himself open to the charge of State paternalism and the setting of an example which might hereafter be used to draw more heavily upon the purse of the British taxpayer. It seems to be generally admitted, however, that the circumstances are exceptional, and justify a prompt relief even if it should contravene some British economic principles. This relief will be a number of loans and grants to clear away the deficits of the islands and to aid them to improve their sugar-manufacturing processes. There will also be grants for the construction of roads, for the purchase of lands for peasant proprietorship, and for the improvement of communication between the islands and Canada, New York, and London. Botanical and agricultural departments for the islands will also be established, and model sugar-factories will be erected in some of them. All these measures, however, are only subsidiary to the plan for giving the colonies a chance to compete on better terms with bounty-fed sugar. Here the question becomes an international one, and partly hinges upon the action of France in not joining the other Powers represented at the Brussels Conference in agreeing to prohibit imports of such sugar. Most of the Continental Governments have found out that the bounties are an expensive mistake, and are willing to give them up if

all the Powers can be induced to do so simultaneously. It could be done by imposing countervailing duties, but Great Britain has hitherto looked upon such a measure as a violation of free-trade principles. The most interesting part of Mr. Chamberlain's statement was that in which he declared that the Government had modified its attitude on this point, and that, if bounty-fed sugar should continue to cripple the ir du try of the West Indies, there would be reserved the full right of prohibiting its importation into Great Britain.

Trade with China

Our trade with China has shown a remarkable increase in recelt years, and figures just tublished by the Bureau of Statistics at Washington reveal a commercial advance during 1897 which is highly gratifying, especially in view of the unfavorable conditions in China which tended to restrict imports. The steady gain made by the United States is shown by a comparison of American imports into China and Hong Kong with those of Great Britain from 1880 to 1897. The comparison shows an increase of over three hundred per cent. in exports from the United States during that period, and a decrease of twenty-five per cent. in exports from Great Britain to the same market in the same time. It should be added that the figures for the United States include both domestic and foreign merchandise, while for Great Britain they include only domestic merchandise. With this qualification, the exports of the United States to China for the year ending June 30, 1897, were $17,984,472, as compared with $3,978,775 in 1880; while the exports of Great Britain to China in 1897 were $35,588,580, as compared with $47,414,105 in 1880. Among the articles included in the list of exports from the United States for 1897 increases are shown in flour, bicycles, carriages and cars, fruits and nuts, telegraph instruments, telephones, scientific instruments, canned beef, bacon, hams, butter, cheese, seeds, tobacco, lumber, and other articles. There was a decline in the exports of cotton goods, though much less proportionate y for the United States than for its chief rivals. The above list is interesting from more than one point of view, as it suggests the men'al and moral as well as the industrial changes which are taking place in China. To see the carriage and the bicycle gradually superseding the sedan-chair, to know that the telegraph and the telephone are piercing the

leaden conservatism which finds one of its best supports in slow communication, and that scientific instruments are getting to be known and used among the people who invented the compass and then ceased to invent anything useful for centuries-these are proofs of progress which should not be lost sight of in the satisfaction felt over good business returns.

The Anti-Vaccinationists' Victory

The anti-vaccinationists in Eng and have achieved a remarkable victory. In the course of an animated debate in the House of Commons upon a measure to secure the better enforcement of the compulsory vaccination law, the anti-vaccinationists showed astonishing strength, and finally the Government, through Mr. Balfour, offered as a compromise that the vaccination of a child should no longer be required until it was four years of age, and that thereafter it should not be required if the parent "specifies to the court that he conscientiously believes that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child." This compromise has now been accepted by both Houses-the Lords at first rejecting it by a majority of ten, but afterwards adopting it by a majority of two. In the debate few members openly avowed their own belief that vaccination caused more sickness than it prevented; but continual reference was made to the fact that the number of those who so believed was steadily increasing, and that the enforcement of the compulsory vaccination law of 1854 was becoming more and more difficult. Very evidently public sympathy was against this feature of the law, and the action of Parliament seems to be almost as great a victory for the anti-vaccinationists as was the decision of the Swiss people in the referendum of 1882, when two hundred and fiftyfour thousand of them voted against compulsory vaccination, and only sixty-eight thousand in its favor. Neitrer in Switzerland, however, nor in Parliament, it should be noted, was a verdict reached upon the merits of vaccination, but only upon the policy of compulsory vaccination.

women for the higher education. The writer had just been at a Woman's Congress held for the purpose of organizing an association of women teachers and others in the Kingdom of Saxony. Its design is to aid the movement now on foot throughout Germany to prevail on the State to create gymnasia (i. e., classical schools) for girls corresponding to those existing now for boys only. For girls there are only private gymnasia, and the State has thus far not accepted their examinations; consequently there could be no matriculation for the university. But the Minister of Public Instruction has just authorized a “State" examination, and young women are about to go into it for the first time in Dresden. The writer from whose letter these interesting facts are drawn says that the progress of the last ten years in this line has been slow but great. “I know," she adds, no women so thoroughly cultivated as a finely educated German woman. She obtains through private instruction all that she is refused at the gymnasia. In Berlin and Leipsic the number of women attending the University lectures increases yearly."

for them had to be done "in large measure under untrained regimental and company commanders ;" and there was a "lack of knowledge as to sanitary conditions to be observed," and "carelessness in not observing the instructions which were furnished." For "there is nothing young men in robust health are so prodigal of as their health, until it is gone." "Every effort has been made to furnish every camp with all appliances asked for, but, of course, the commanding officers in the field are the ones who have direct charge of these men." The Secretary implies that where these officers have been competent there have been few or no difficulties. "For instance, one army corps commander has given orders, and enforces them, respecting sanitary affairs, and he has tɔ-day but a fraction over two per cent. on the sick list." "One regiment in the Chickamauga camp has a colonel who enforces sanitary rules in his regiment, obliging the men to boil all the water they drink, keeping the camp cleanly, and the result is less than twenty-five sick, and his camp, too, is in as unfavorable a place as any in the command. Others more favorably situated have ten times that

Secretary Alger has written a long letter to Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, which has been made public. The letter must be regarded as a semi-official defense against the charges of incompetency and neglect which are now being brought against the War Department by the press-Republican, Democratic, and Independent-throughout the country. The letter is too long to be republished in full in our columns. It is rambling and inconsequential in style, and therefore difficult to condense. But we here attempt to give our readers its substance—and as far as practicable its phraseology—that they may see for themselves the grounds on which the Secretary bases his expressions of satisfaction with the administration of his Department and its results. He says:

A grand total of 268,500 men, including 27,000 men of the regular army, had to be gathered from the various States and mustered into the service on very short notice. There was scarcely any camp outfit for their accommodation; this had to be provided by the War Department. "When war was declared, there was no equipment whatever for the volunteers in store." The work of gathering these men in camps and providing

medical supplies were sent with the army to Santiago, with lighters for unloading. But the lighters were lost in a severe storm. Others sent to take their place were similarly destroyed. The army was thus dependent on lighters lent by the navy. And the military necessity for expedition was so great that the army was ordered forward at once, without waiting for its stores. The result proved the wisdom of General Shafter's expedi tious movement. Delay would have involved greater sickness and imperiled the whole movement. Subsequent landing of supplies was rendered almost impossible, because the wind sprang up every morning at ten o'clock, making a high surf upon the beach. When the fever first broke out at Santiago, it was taken for yellow fever, and it was not thought safe to bring the sick to the North. "Upon inquiry it was ascertained that very few of these cases, comparatively, were yellow fever, when it was at once decided to bring the army home as quickly as possible." At this point in his letter the Secretary makes the declaration that "everything that human ingenuity could devise has been done to succor that army." He closes his letter with some statistics for the purpose of giving "a little idea of the work that has been done,"

A total of 216.400 volunteers mustered into service; $5,030,000 expended for harbor defenses; an entire medical department created anew; 110,907,235 pounds of rations "purchased and distributed;” 9,700 officers, 233,962 enlisted men, 40,582 animals, besides wagons and stores, transported; 6,274,483 articles of clothing and camp equipment distributed; and the whole army promptly paid. If Secretary Alger imagines that the American people will be satisfied with this statement, or that it will have any tendency to allay the increasing and passionate demand for a thorough and fearless investigation, he greatly underrates their intelligence.

Why, when war was declared, was there no equipment for the volunteers in store? Two months before war was declared Congress gave the President $50,000,000 to prepare for it. The Secretary of the Navy began his preparations at once. Why did the Secretary of War do nothing? Why were our camps left in charge of untrained regimental and company commanders? There were hundreds of men living who had had experience in the Civil War and who would gladly have given the benefit of it to the United States. Why were the offers of service from such refused?

It is not true that there was a "lack of knowledge as to sanitary conditions"! Sanitary engineering is a science. There were scores, not to say hundreds, of sanitary engineers entirely competent to select and lay out camps for five or ten thousand men and prescribe the regulations which would have made typhoid fever imp. ssible. "Every effort has been made to furnish every camp with all appliances asked for "! Compare with this Mr. George Kennan's statement in The Outlook (August 20, p. 966), "Twelve or fifteen thousand men were sent into the woods and chaparral between Siboney and Santiago without hammocks or wall-tents, and without any vessel larger than a coffee-cup in which to boil water." "One army corps commander has given orders, and enforces them, respecting sanitary affairs, and he has to-day but a fraction over two per cent. on the sick list." "One regiment in the Chickamauga camp has a colonel who enforces sanitary rules, . . . and the result is less than twenty-five sick." That shows what can be done. Whose business is it to require other army corps commanders and other colonels to enforce sanitary rules? If a colonel is a coward and orders a needless retreat, if he is incompetent and blunders in ordering a use

What

less charge, he is called to account. is the country to think of a Secretary of War who is satisfied to say that wholesale disease and death are due to the incompetence of officers for whose appointment he is partly responsible, and for whose criminal neglect he should instantly call them to account? Our Secretary of War neither has done so nor proposes to do so. Did the Secretary of War not know that storms occur at sea, and especially at this season of the year in the Caribbean Sea? Did it not occur to him that ighters might be wrecked? Had he never heard that an army is dependent on its supplies? Did it never occur to him that an army in Cuba without supplies would be ineffective and in peril? or that hardtack and bacon are not the supplies for Cuba campaigning? or that there might be other ways of landing supplies through a surf than by lighters ?-Mr. George Kennan has given in The Outlook an account of one. Did it never occur to the officers whose business it was to land supplies that if a wind and surf arose regularly at 10 A.M. every day, landing of necessary supplies should be done before ten, or by search-lights at night? Doubtless the difficulties at Santiago were very great. But efficient men overcome difficulties. It is only the inefficient who offer excuses in lieu of achievement. It was known to the surgeons in the field that calentura is not yellow fever. Thecdore Roosevelt is no medical expert, but even he recognized the difference between yellow fever and "fake yellow fever." "Upon inquiry it was ascertained that very few of these cases, comparatively, were yellow fever." How long did it take to make the inquiry? and how happened it that it was not decided to bring the army home as quickly as possible until the famous round-robin had set the Nation ablaze with excitement ard indignation at the delay ? Over 100,000,000 pounds of rations "purchased and distributed." No! Mr. Secretary; not distributed. That is exactly the difficulty. Purchased, no doubt. But in scores of cases left locked up in cars or storehouses, or carried back and forth in supply-ships, because there were no bills of lading, or because there was no one authorized to see that they were distributed. If there had been no food obtainable, the soldiers and the country would have accepted excuses for the famine-stricken camps. What they cannot forgive is that, after the purchase of over 100,000,000 pounds of rations, the soldiers were still left hungry

Failures and even blunders in the administration of that Department the American people could readily forgive-perhaps too readily. What they will not and ought not to forgive is the complacent spirit which refuses to see that there have been any failures and refuses to make any attempt to ascertain the causes of failures and recommend provisions which will make their repetition impossible. And this is emphatically the spirit of Secretary Alger's letter. In the face of the typhoid at Camps Alger and Chickamauga, of the absolute failure of adequate medical provision at Santiago, of the crowded and unsaritary condition of the transports which brought the sick soldiers home, of deaths by the score absolutely needless, of the fact that incompetence in our administration has slain more of our soldiers than have been slain by the shots of the enemy, Secretary Alger writes concerning the home camps: Every effort has been made from the begin ning to furnish every camp with all appliances asked for.

And concerning the army at Santiago:

Everything that human ingenuity could devise has been done to succor that army-not the ingenuity of the Secretary of War, but the result of the combined counsel of those who have had a lifelong experience in the field.

The Secretary claims, therefore, the reader will observe, that the failure to get proper food to the soldiers in camp; the failure to furnish them with summer clothing in Cuba, compelling them to go into the battle almost naked; the lack of surgeons and medical stores after the battle; the housing them in fever-contaminated houses at Siboney before the battle, and the burning of those houses after they had done their evil work; the crowded and unsanitary condition of the transports on which the sick and dying were brought to the North; the utter lack of proper food for them en route, and their consequent arrival famished and dying from exhaustion; and the conditions in Camps Alger and Chickamauga which made them breedingplaces of typhoid fever, are all necessary conditions of war. "Everything that human ingenuity could devise has been done." We are, therefore, to believe that no human ingenuity could have prevented these dreadful scenes. The man who writes that sentence does thereby condemn himself. He affirms, not only that he is incompetent to prevent such scenes of horror, but that he

izing the necessity of preventing them, even when they are thrust before his eyes. Secretary Alger's defense of himself seems to us worse than the original offense. Errors of administration the American people might well forgive in one who saw and regretted them after the terrible results had been seen and felt; but it ought never to forgive the self-satisfaction which refuses to see what everybody else has seen, and fails to m-ke any attempt to ascertain the responsibility for conditions which have filled all other men with horror.

There is no hope of any inquiry under the auspices of the War Department. The President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, m'ght, and in our judgment ought to, order one. Blunders in our administration have slain more victims than perished in the Maine. A court as impartial and composed of men as fearless as that appointed by the President to investigate the Maine disaster should conduct an inquiry into the causes which led to their needless sacrifice.

The Quebec Conference

The Quebec Conference, about whose anticipated results in the promotion of AngloSaxon reunion so much has been said, opened at the Parliament Buildings in the city of Quebec on August 23. The American and Canadian Commissioners were all present, and, after a short preliminary discussion, Lord Herschell, the representative of Great Britain, was chosen Chairman. On behalf of the city the Mayor read an address of welcome, to which Senator Fairbanks replied in a speech which has since been widely quoted for its admirable language and temper. The first few days of the Conference have been occupied mainly with arranging the order of the discussions, and it is evident that the Commissioners expect sessions which may last through several months. Adjournments may have to be made on account of political work which is expected to require the attention of one or more of our Commissioners at home; but, independently of this, the questions awaiting settlement are so numerous and complicated, and the amount of expert evidence so great, that much time will be necessary to reach conclusions mutually satisfactory. It may be truly said that, from the Canadian point of view, the Quebec