slaves destroy the republic. Wherever we have inferior and dependent races within our borders to-day, we have a political problem-" the Negro problem," "the Chinese problem," "the Indian problem." These problems we slowly solve. Industrial training and industrial pride make a man of the Negro. Industrial interests many even make a man of the Chinaman, and the Indian disappears as our civilization touches him.

But in the tropics such problems are perennial and insoluble, Cuba, Manila, Nicaragua, will be slave territories for centuries to come. These people in such a cli

mate can never have self-government in the AngloSaxon sense. Whatever form of control we adopt, we shall be in fact slave-drivers, and the business of slavedriving will react upon us. Slavery itself was a disease which came to us from the British West Indies. It breeds in the tropics like yellow fever and leprosy. Can even an imperial republic last, part slave, part free?

It is

But England endures, and her control of slave territories is her "doom and pride." What then of British imperialism? From the standpoint of imperialism England is an oligarchy, not a republic. Her government is not self-rule, but the direction of commerce. admiralty rather than democracy. Americans govern themselves. Englishmen are ruled by the government of their own choosing. Englishmen govern themselves in municipal affairs, and in ways from which we have much to learn. In foreign affairs their huge governmental machine, backed by the momentum of tradition, is all-powerful. This rules Ireland, India, Gibraltar, Egypt, all England's dependencies and wards. The other colonies are republics in fact. Canada, New Zeal

and, the states of Australia-these are republics bound to keep the peace with the mother country, but in no other way controlled by her. Only ties of sentiment bind Canada to England. In all practical matters, she is one with the United States.

The stronger the governmental machine, and the more adjustable its powers, the better the government. But government is not the main business of a republic. If good government were all, democracy would not deserve half the effort that is spent upon it. For the function of democracy is not to make government good. It is to make men strong. Better government than any republic has yet enjoyed could be had in simpler and cheaper ways. The automatic scheme of competitive examination would give us better service at half the present cost. Even an ordinary intelligence office, or statesman's employment bureau would serve us better than conventions and elections. Government too good as well as too bad may have a baneful influence on men. The purpose of self-government is to intensify individual responsibility, to promote attempts at wisdom, through which true wisdom may come at last. The republic is a huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange experiments are performed, but in which, as in other laboratories, wisdom may arise from experience, and once arisen may work itself out into virtue.

It is not true that the government "which is best administered is best." That is the maxim of tyranny. That government is best which makes the best men. In the training of manhood lies the certain pledge of better government in the future. The civic problems of the future will be greater than those of the past. They

Not Marl

will concern not the relations of nation to nation, but of man to man. The policing of far-off islands, the herding of baboons and elephants, the maintenance of the machinery of imperialism are petty things beside the duties which the higher freedom demands. To turn to these empty and showy affairs, is to neglect our own business for the gossip of our neighbors. Such work may be a matter of necessity; it should not be a source of pride. The political greatness of England has never lain in her navies nor the force of her arms. It has lain in her struggles for individual freedom. borough nor Nelson nor Wellington is its exponent. Let us say rather Pym and Hampden, and Gladstone and Bright. The real problems of England have always been at home. The pomp of imperialism, the display of naval power, the commercial control of India and China,-all these are as the "bread and circuses" by which the Roman emperors held the mob from their thrones. They keep the people busy and put off the day of final reckoning. "Gild the dome of the Invalides," was Napoleon's cynical command, when he learned that the people of Paris were becoming desperate.

The people of England seek blindly for a higher justice, a loftier freedom, and so the ruling ministry crowns the good queen as "Empress of India." Meanwhile, the real problems of civilization develop and ripen. They care nothing for the greatness of empire nor the glitter of imperialism. They must be solved by men, and each man must help solve his own problems. The development of republican manhood is just now the most important matter that any nation in the world has

on hand. We have been fairly successful thus far, but perhaps only fairly. Our government is careless, wasteful and unjust, but our men are growing self-contained and wise. Despite the annual invasion of foreign illiteracy, despite the degeneration of congested cities, the individual intelligence of men stands higher in America than any other part of the world. The bearing of the people at large in these days is a lesson in itself. Compare the behavior of the American people, in this and other trying times, with that of the masses of any other nation, and we see what democracy has done. And we shall see more of this as our history goes on. Free schools, free ballot, free thought, free religion—all tend to enforce self-reliance, self-respect, and the sense of duty, which are the surest foundation of national great

ness.

An active foreign policy would slowly change much of this. The nation which deals with war and diplomacy must be quick to act and quick to change. It must, like the Oregon, be able to reverse itself within its own length. To this end, good government is a necessity, whether it be self-government or not. Democracy yields before diplomacy. Republicanism steps aside when war is declared. "An army," said Wellington, can get along under a poor general. It can do nothing under a debating society." In war the strongest man must lead, and military discipline is the only training for an army. In a militant nation the same rules hold in peace as in war. We cannot try civic experiments with a foe at our gates. A foe is always at the gates of a nation with a vigorous foreign policy. Experiments such as we freely try would wreck the British Em

pire. For one of England's great parties to propose a radical change like that of the free coinage of silver would produce a panic like that of the swallowing of London by an earthquake. The British nation is hated and feared of all nations except our own, and we love her only in our lucid intervals. Only her eternal vigilance keeps the vultures from her coasts. Eternal vigilance of this sort will strengthen governments, will build up nations; it will not in like degree make men. The day of the nations as nations is passing. National ambitions, national hopes, national aggrandizement-all these may become public nuisances. Imperialism, like feudalism, belongs to the past. The men of the world as men, not as nations, are drawing closer and closer together. The needs of commerce are stronger than the will of nations, and the final guarantee of peace and good will among men will be not "the parliament of nations," but the self-control of men.

But whatever the outcome of the present war, whatever the fateful twentieth century may bring, the primal duty of Americans is never to forget that men are more than nations; that wisdom is more than glory, and virtue more than dominion of the sea. The kingdom of God is within us. The nation exists for its men, never the men for the nation. "The only government that I recognize," said Thoreau, " and it matters not how few are at the head of it or how small its army, is the power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice." And the will of free men to be just one toward another, is our best guarantee that “ government of the people, for the people, and by the people, shall not perish from the earth."