everywhere imminent in these coast settlements of Alaska, and the blame for it rests on us. "Reconcentrados" between Arctic snows and San Francisco greed, the Aleuts must starve and freeze. From Prince William's Sound to Attu, nearly fifteen hundred miles, not a village has a sure means of support left to-day. According to latest reports from Port Etches, all the people of the village live together in the cellar of an abandoned warehouse. Wosnessenski was starving last year. In Belkofski, Morjovi, Atka, Attu, and a half dozen other villages, the Company's store had been closed because the people can no longer pay for supplies. Civilization has made flour, sugar, tea and tobacco necessities of life, and these they can get no longer. As our government is constituted, men must govern themselves and send their delegates to Congress. For others we have no government at all. The great corporations in Alaska are still squatters on government land, and the disputes among their employees must be settled by blow of fist, or they are not settled at all. Open warfare with knife and gun has existed more than once along the salmon rivers. This is not the fault of the companies. They are law-abiding enough when there is any law. "But there runs no law of God nor man to the north of fifty-three." The villages of Aleuts and Esquimaux are ruled by the Company storekeeper and the Russian priest, each with authority unlimited and unsupported by law. The stanch laws of prohibition by which liquor is excluded from Alaska cannot enforce themselves, and no other adequate force is provided. The whole matter is a huge farce, and its necessary result is contempt for law. With a colonial bureau like that of England, the problems of ruling an inferior and dependent people would be simple enough. Such a bureau could take care of Alaska and could give good government to any territory over which our flag may float. Such a bureau we must have if Alaska is not to remain a matter of public embarrassment. Such a bureau could operate Hawaii as well. Hawaii cannot govern itself under our federal forms. It is an oligarchy in the nature of things. Under colonial management it would be peaceful and prosperous. The more it had to do, the more effective such a colonial bureau would become. Every governmental department tends to aggrandize itself. Colonies would demand more colonies. If we have Alaska already and are certain to take Hawaii, why not establish such a colonial bureau and manage them as England manages Hong Kong and Singapore and Jamaica? In the same way we may control Cuba, which falls as a ripe pear into our hands. And Porto Rico must go with Cuba. The Philippines are not very far away. They are nearer to San Francisco than Boston was to Philadelphia in the times of Washington, and the transfer of news is a matter of a few hours only. The Philippines are as large as New England and New York, with a population greater than all the Rocky Mountain country and the Pacific Slope combined. They have a hard population to manage, to be sure, a substratum of Malays, lazy and revengeful, over these a social layer of thrifty Chinese and canny Japanese, then next a Spanish aristocracy and a surface scum of the wanderers of all the world. In the unexplored interiors of the great islands live the wild tribes of negritos, untamed black imps, as incapable of self-government or of any other government as so many monkeys. Spain has stood at the gateway of this rich land and taken toll of whatever goes out. This is all she has attempted. We could not do much more, but whatever is possible we can do as well as any one else. If we do not keep the Philippines they will surely fall into worse hands. And all these territories are to-day virtually under the American flag. But why stop here? One great need of the world's commerce is a canal across the territory of Nicaragua, and we may seize that turbulent little republic as a guarantee for the security and neutrality of the canal. Then Costa Rica has her coffee fields, and there is a wondrous wealth in Guatemala. In the Caroline Islands we would find a good coaling station. We have literary interest in Samoa at least, and in the name of the Ladrones, the islands of the great thieves, we ought to find something suggestive. An open port of our own on the coast of China would give our commerce its proper level of equality. Perhaps Swatow would suffice for us after Russia, and Germany, and France, and England has each made its choice. Then there are the Blue Canaries. From the tall peak of Teneriffe we can overlook the entrance to the Mediterranean and keep our watch on the politics of Europe. As England is the assignee of bankrupt Egypt, shall we not seize the assets of bankrupt Spain? To be sure we come in late in the game of territorial expansion. We must take what we can get, and we cannot get much except by force. Still we must have it. For all this and more, according to Theodore Roosevelt and a host To help along of others, is our "manifest destiny." "manifest destiny," is the purpose of the war with Spain. The spell is on us, and it is the more irresistible because it came unawares. Recently in an address in Boston, Richard Olney, one of the wisest of our public men, who checked the bold, bad British Lion by a bluff as big as the lion's own roar, made a vigorous plea for national expansion. He says: "But it is even a more pitiful ambition for such a country to aim to seclude itself from the world at large, and to live a life as isolated and independent as if it were the only country on the footstool. A nation is as much a member of society as an individual. * * * Does a foreign question or controversy present itself, appealing however forcibly to our sympathies or sense of right—what happens the moment it is suggested that the United States should seriously participate in its settlement? A shiver runs through all the ranks of capital, lest the uninterrupted course of money-making be interfered with; the cry of 'Jingo!' comes up in various quarters; advocates of peace at any price make themselves heard from innumerable pulpits and rostrums; while practical politicians invoke the doctrine of the Farewell Address as an absolute bar to all positive action, The upshot is more or less an explosion of sympathy or antipathy at more or less public meetings, and, if the case is a very strong one, a more or less tardy tender by the Government of its 'moral support.' Is that a creditable part for a great nation to play in the affairs of the world? *This country was once the pioneer, and is now the millionaire. It behooves it to recognize the changed conditions, and to realize its great place among the power of the earth. It behooves it to accept the commanding position belonging to it with all its advantages on the one hand, and ail its burdens on the other. It is not enough for it to vaunt its greatness and superiority, and call upon the rest of the world to admire and be duly impressed. Posing before less favored peoples as an exemplar of the superiority of American institutions may be justified and may have its uses; but posing alone is like answering the appeal of a mendicant by bidding him admire your own sleekness, your own fine clothes and handsome house, and your generally comfortable and prosperous condition. He possibly should do that and be grateful for the spectacle, but what he really asks and needs is a helping hand. The mission of this country, if it has one, and I verily believe it has, is not merely to pose, but to act—and, while always governing itself by prudence and common sense and making its own special interests the first and paramount objects of its care, to forego no fitting opportunity to further the progress of civilization practically as well as theoretically by timely deeds as well as by eloquent words. There is such a thing for a nation as a 'splendid isolation—as when, for a worthy cause, for its own independence, or dignity, or vital interests, it unshrinkingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But isolation that is nothing but the shirking of the responsibility of high place and great power is simply gnominious.” "The doors to that shining destiny are open wide," says a late writer in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Shall the Nation pass them or shall it shrink back into itself and leave to other and braver hands the prizes of the future. To broaden out in the field of enterprise and acquisition is the duty of the Republic, to strengthen itself whenever it safely can, to do its part in redeeming the victims of ignorance as well as of cruelty, to gather to itself the riches that will free it from debt, and make its influence paramount in the world's affairs as the greatest part of the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood; to plant itself in the midst of events, and mold them to its mighty purpose.” Its Such is the dream of American imperialism. prizes lie in our hands unasked. The fates have forced them upon us. But before we seize them, now let us ask what it will cost? First, it will cost life and money in rich measure. Kipling tells us the cost of British Admiralty : "We have fed our sea for a thousand years, And she calls us still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves |