parting of the ways. Federalism or Imperialism-which shall it be?

In the direction of imperialism we have already taken certain steps. The promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine is one of these. Its original impulse was a jealous regard for the liberties of the republics of Latin America. We make no objection to the present occupation of parts of America by European powers, but we shall prevent by force any extension of such dominion. The cause of the Monroe Doctrine was the danger to republicanism through monarchial aggression. With the republics of America our interests were supposed to be in unison. But our real interests lie now in other directions. We have a thousand ties binding us to Europe for one to Latin America. Even Japan and China are more to us than the states of South America. Moreover, the republics we would guard are really only republics in name. They have no more of a republican spirit than has Italy or Spain, and vastly less than England or Germany. The aggressions of England on Venezuela which our strong protest prevented were really in the interest of civilization. These republics hate the United States, her people and her institutions. They resent our protection and repel our patronage, and as for us, we are likely to despise them rather than to love them. The guardian of the two Americas must use a strong hand if it would save all of its wards from barbarism.

So the Monroe Doctrine is not alone a willingness to protect our sister republics from European aggression. It must become a means of holding them in order. So long as the Monroe Doctrine is put forth, so long must we be in some degree surety for the good behavior of South America. This necessity has carried us away from our traditional attention to our own affairs. It will carry

us still further unless the policy be reversed.

The purchase of Alaska marks another movement away from self-government. This vast, wild, resourceful land, unfit for habitation for the most part, unfit for self

control, we have made a province of our republic. We have placed it under our flag, but the flag is all we have given it. On stretches of coast as long as that of California, dotted with fishing villages, the United States has exercised no authority whatever. Over the whole coast of Alaska, from Sitka to Point Barrow, there have been only scattering and sporadic efforts at national rule. With a population so weak and scattered, self-government is impossible, and we have no other form of government to offer. The condition of Alaska to-day is simply a disgrace to us. The host that fare to the Klondike make their own government as they go along. What little government Alaska had in the past has now been mostly withdrawn on account of the war with Spain. We need the patrol vessels for coast defense. This is as though we sent San Francisco police to garrison Manila. In public affairs we can never attend to two things at a time. Considering our possibilities and our intentions, we have treated the Aleutian Islands as shabbily as Spain has treated Cuba, and Russia has almost as good a right to protest against our ways as we have to protest against those of Spain.

This difference obtains. The natives of Alaska are gentle and tractable and away from the eyes of the world. They have no friends, no element of the picturesque, and our cruelty is not violence but neglect. We have wantonly allowed the destruction of the Sea Otter, their chief means of subsistence. We have wasted the sea-lion which furnishes their boats. Starvation and death are 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 has 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. From St. Lawrence we hear that the people have traded all their possessions for a cargo of "Florida Water," which is a polite name for raw whiskey, and have all starved to death after a week of debauch.

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 store-keeper, and the Russian priest, each with authority unlimited and unsupported by law. The staunch 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 Kanakas and 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 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 bas 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 of others is our "manifest destiny." To help along "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:

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"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 its

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