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Harry laughed, and said something about popular. If we fellows would study some of being glad to work with McGinnis that day the machine methods, without dropping any himself; and paid him a neat compliment of our principles, either, we mightn't find with an ingenuous flush on his own young election such a blamed cold day." cheeks. Then, in turn, he held out his hand.

"Oh, that's all right," said McGinnis, looking rather surprised. It was several years before he understood entirely all that simple gesture meant from young Lossing. "Well, I see Father Mahan down the street, and I must git him ayfter the boys. See you later, gentlemen."

Billy's eyes followed him across the macadam. "He's a good man!" sighed Billy from the depths of a grateful heart.

Tommy did not return the expected smile. "I've been thinking, too," said Thomas Fitzmaurice; "if it's right for him to sacrifice his own interests and risk his popularity for the good of the ward, why isn't it right to do as much and sacrifice the interests of the ward, too, if necessary, for the good of the whole town?"

"But that's municipal good government. That's reform!"

"Oh, Lord! I guess I'll have to go for it!" groaned Tommy.

"I think, myself, the recording angel can And thus, in one Sunday morning, did afford to do considerable blotting for Michael Alderman Michael McGinnis lose a good McGinnis on account of this day's work," office, avert a strike, and unconsciously plant says Harry." He has a conscience, after the seed that was to convert the brightest all. And, Tom, I've been thinking this of his machine politicians, slowly but surely, morning. I begin to see why Mac is so into a reformer.

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AMERICA REVISITED IN WAR TIME.

BY HENRY NORMAN.

EDITOR'S NOTE.-Mr. Henry Norman is well known as an English traveler, author, and journalist. After courses of study in France and Germany, he chose Harvard for his university, and graduated there in 1881. His special field of work as author and journalist is foreign politics, and he may generally be looked for where any question of international diplomacy grows acute. This brought him to Washington immediately after President Cleveland's Venezuela message, and the abandonment of the "Schomburgk Line" as the special point in the British demand was due in large part to the official documents of half a century previous which Mr. Norman secured in Washington and cabled to the "Daily Chronicle." He was thanked by President Cleveland for his services to the cause of peace. His present visit to Washington is due, of course, to the war and the development of closer relations between the United States and Great Britain. Mr. Norman spent four years in the Far East, visiting among other countries the Philippine Islands, and he has published two wellknown books on the Far Eastern peoples and countries. Mrs. Norman is also an author. She was, before her marriage, Miss Ménie Muriel Dowie, and is a grand-daughter of Dr. Robert Chambers of Edinburgh. She has written several books, the earliest being "A Girl in the Karpathians," and the latest, "The Crook of the Bough."

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F course you fully understand," said of the masses of human scum from Central Mr. Speaker Reed to me a few days Europe, the outbreaks of savagery which ago, "that we have burst our swaddling- have characterized certain labor troubles, clothes'?" Everybody in the room smiled the degeneration of the Senate, the rejection at the characteristic sarcasm. But does of the Arbitration Treaty; above all, the apthe inflated phrase rest upon a substratum parently placid acquiescence of the better of truth, or do the American people and the American individual in things which he American idea stand virtually where they loathed these were some of the holes did three years ago? That is the most interesting question in the world to-day. It would be presumption to offer a confident answer: it is permissible to express an opinion.

through which my optimism ran to waste. In fact, as Emerson said Englishmen do when they speak of America, I forgot my philosophy and remembered my disparaging anecdotes. Distance lent deception to the view. Now I come back, use my eyes and ears for a few weeks, talk intimately with many people, and what is corrupt and dangerous falls into its proper proportion and perspective, pessimism hides itself like a night-prowling animal at sunrise, and when I discuss with Americans the future of their country I an apt to find myself more royalist than the king.

Why is this the effect of America revisited? I begin with little things.

When I graduated from Harvard, I thought I knew something of America. I found out my mistake after a few months spent in the West. During the seventeen years that have, alas! slipped away since then, American affairs have interested me in a degree second only to those of my own country. From time to time I have come back and corrected my impressions. On each occasion, however, a curious thing has happened. I have gone home profoundly impressed with the energy, the intelligence, The observant visitor to America must be the courage, the resources, and the prospects impressed first with the remarkable developof the American people; and bit by bit this ment of what may be called applied intelliimpression has oozed away, like water from gence. Not only is there an extraordinary a leaky tub, until I found myself doubting fertility of invention, but also, what is perwhether the United States is really on the haps more striking still, there is apparently up grade at all. The triumphs of corruption an instant readiness on everybody's part to in politics, the hair-breadth escape from make use of the things invented. In Europe, free silver and socialism at the White House, when we have a certain "fitment" in house the growth of trusts, the tariff tinkered to or office that serves its purpose well, we are fill the pockets of individuals, the capture of satisfied with it and go on with our work. New York by Tammany, the capitulation of If anybody comes along with something New England to the Irish, the social condi- rather better, we look upon him as a nution of the coal and iron districts of Penn- sance. The thing we have is quite good sylvania, the dangers lurking in the presence enough. In America it seems that a man

us, it is obvious that we should follow intensive cultivation and employ every possible appliance to get more and cheaper produce from the land. The facts are the exact opposite. American agricultural machinery has revolutionized farming for you. We stand virtually where we did twenty-five or fifty years ago. Every English farm laborer believes that hedgehogs suck cows. My own man suffocates his bees at the end of each season, because he says they get lazy and are not worth keeping. The most convenient implement I own is an American horse-hoe. Cut green bones form one of the valuable foods for poultry. There is not, to the best of my belief, a green-bone cutter in the United Kingdom. I have just ordered one in

will try an object one day and throw it away the next for something a trifle more convenient or expeditious. From visit to visit, for example, I have observed a constant improvement in the telephone. The instrument has grown smaller, neater, more graceful, simpler, and easier to use. As it stands on an American desk to-day, it might be a flower-holder. In some of the best and most expensive parts of London to-day you cannot have a telephone put in your house at all. When you do, it is the ugly box arrangement of ten years ago. I call upon a journalist friend in New York. Upon his desk stands an elegant little apparatus through which he converses every afternoon with Washington and Chicago. In a London newspaper office you might as well look Massachusetts. for a machine for making liquid air. The These are trifling matters, if you will; but street cars are another example. When I they are extremely significant, and the same was here a short time ago, the system of considerations apply in every direction. The traction was by underground cable. This is English bicycle-makers tell you that a maalready apparently becoming extinct. The chine weighing less than thirty pounds is not cars themselves, too, are often marvels of really safe. I am a fairly heavy man, and I comfort and light. In London there is not, have ridden for three years a Columbia weighso far as I know, a single street car pro- ing twenty-five pounds, at all seasons and on pelled by any mechanical means, and they all kinds of roads, and the first accident or are the dim and dirty vehicles of a quarter breakage has yet to happen to it. American of a century ago. It is impossible to imagine heavy electrical machinery is going all over a better system of street tramport than the world. American locomotives are beating prevails, for instance, in Washington. Even British ones in foreign markets. American the traveling post-office runs by electricity mining machinery has long been without a along the tracks. Another striking example rival. Naturally, it is not agreeable for me, is builders' hardware. Locks, hinges, sash- as an Englishman, to chronicle these facts; pulleys, window-fasteners, bath-fittings, and, the like are years ahead of us. There is not a hotel in Europe-I do not believe there is a private house in which these things are as graceful and serviceable as they are at the hotel where I stayed in New York. On this visit I noticed a new fitting on the wall of the bathroom. It was an electric heater for curling-irons! To you this perhaps seems a very ordinary kind of thing. I stood before it in amazement. Or take what you call elevators and we call lifts. We are in the dark ages still. There is not a building in London, indeed not in Europe, constructed with the ingenuity, the convenience, the elegance of some of the new big buildings in Broadway. I happen to be interested at this moment in housebuilding; therefore I am taking home a supply of small objects and a collection of catalogues of every kind. The farm offers another set of examples. Since in England our farms are comparatively small, and the competition of the Western prairie and Russian steppe and Argentine plain is ruining

and, of course, in other directions and enterprises the British manufacturer still beats the world. But I hold it to be a patriotic duty to warn my fellow-countrymen that they must alter their methods and make new and different efforts if they are to hold their own in the future.

I could fill pages with reflections suggested by "America Revisited." But the addendum" in War Time" suggests matters of vaster interest, so I hurry on. Two other observations, however, I must set down. First, it is obvious that not only in mechanical ingenuity and commercial enterprise are the American people advancing fast, but the growth of taste is also great and striking. In domestic architecture America has made great strides during the last few years, and to-day she is unsurpassed, even by England, the land of the beautiful home. In commercial architecture I think she is already ahead. There is a street-car terminus in Washington more attractive to the eye for sound artistic reasons than most city halls going up in Europe to-day. Better

taste is shown by American publishers in to climb over it; the "back of beyond" the binding of their books than is generally draws him like a magnet.

to be found in Europe. American women I cannot help thinking it will be so with are to-day dressed with greater elegance America also. Of course I know the objecthan any women outside Paris. And this tions well. The Constitution makes no proleads me to my second reflection. Unless vision for the government of alien races in my eye deceives me, the race of American remote lands; there is no class of trained women is growing taller and stronger and administrators; the governorship of the first handsomer. During the twenty-two years colony will go to the man who "fixed the I have visited the United States I have fences" in the last election; colonial rivalry noticed this gradual development. Greatly with foreign nations will bring entanglement daring, I express the conviction that in the in their quarrels; army and navy must be world no gathering of more beautiful women kept great; they will cost vast sums, and can be seen than in the halls of the Waldorf their existence will be a temptation to use Hotel any afternoon between five and six. them. These are strong arguments and Columbia is putting on beauty as a garment. may prevail. But the answers are as When her voice becomes as attractive as her strong. The Constitution is not a law of figure and her features, she shall be called nature: man made it and man can mend Helen, and, like her of Troy, confer immor- it; the imperative necessity for capable tality with a kiss. and honest men may be the death-blow to the system which distributes embassies and legations and consulates as political rewards; the war has brought America into sharp-cut relations with foreign Powers, and nothing can alter this; a strong navy is already building, and the American people will insist upon the formation of an army large enough, for instance, to avoid such a humiliation as having to wait all summer to collect and train a force strong enough to fight Spain in Cuba. It is like the antinomies of Kant: the contradictory propositions can both be proved. Some minds will be convinced by the one set of arguments, others by the other. But in the end, from all I have seen and heard, I fancy the subtle temptation of empire, the magic magnetism of the Orient, the Drang nach Osten, will prevail. It is like the hypnotism of the East over the traveler; once let its fever touch your blood, and you are enchained as the tide to the moon.

In "America in War Time," however, there are stranger things by far than these. Unless all signs fail, a vital modification has come over the country; a new era has opened; the great Republic has suffered a sea-change. This has not been deliberate. No statesman foresaw and willed it. Possibly a majority of the people do not desire it. The gods do not consult mortals. If the "Maine" had not been blown up, there would have been no war. If the Cuban insurgents had been as strong as was supposed, the war might have stopped with the freedom of Cuba. If Admiral Dewey had not been forced to make a new base for his fleet, he would not have smashed the Spanish squadron. If he had not smashed it, and thus become responsible for the islands, he would not have needed reinforcements. If ten thousand American troops had not been sent to him, there would have been no question of keeping the Philippines. A chain of events, forged by invisible hands, has drawn the American people to ask themselves whether their destiny restricts them forever within the limits of their own continent; why they should not appear among the Powers of the world in the coming struggle for the East, seize new markets for themselves, and set their flag over far-off lands to allure their pioneers and merchants to fresh fields. To such a ques- An American colonial policy will have some tion men of our race find instinctively but results which have not yet all been considone answer. It is the sap of the tree push- ered. "Blood is the price of admiralty," ing resistlessly up in spring. To Frenchman and many a brave life will be spent in the and German the founding of colonies is a getting. When the war with China broke mechanical, state-fostered, theoretically- out, Japan sent 5,000 soldiers to the Pescajustified operation. It is in an Englishman's blood; he cannot see a sea without desiring to cross it, or a mountain without wanting

"Whoso has tasted the honey-sweet fruit from the stem of the lotus

Never once wishes to leave it, and never once seeks to go homeward;

There would he stay, if he could, content with the eaters of lotus,

Plucking and eating the lotus, forgetting that he was returning."

dores, islands certainly not more trying to health than the Philippines. Thirty of these were killed in fight, and exactly 1,050 were

effective when the war was over. The remainder had either died or been invalided home. And the Japanese soldier is accustomed to an Eastern summer and Eastern food. Hong Kong was known for many years as the "grave of regiments." Its cemetery, called "Happy Valley," reads to-day like a military directory. British troops there are paraded every morning for "cholera-belt inspection," and any man found without that essential part of costume in the tropics gets "three days C.B." (confinement to barracks). When I was in Manila, an epidemic of cholera was raging; a hundred people were dying a day. The Spaniards, crying Colerico!" stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths and turned their faces to the wall as a stricken man was carried to hospital in a hammock slung on a pole, covered with a sheet. One of the Chinese firemen of the "Zafiro" (now an American auxiliary vessel) died just before we sailed. And then the typhoons! Between Manila and Hong Kong is the most typhoon-haunted sea in the world. But it is needless to dwell on horrors. Such things have never deterred Englishmen, nor will they deter Americans. There is yellow fever in Florida; there are blizzards in Dakota; and I have been told that the climate of Arizona leaves something to be desired in summer. Besides, the Philippines are an inexhaustible storehouse of tropical wealth. They are also the home of the most marvelous orchids in the world; and American hothouses will soon blaze with unimagined splendor, while American beauty will lavish the tenderest nursing on the Philippine pioneer who brings her in his pallid and shaking hands a mysterious garment of jusi, woven silk and pine-fibre, the most diaphanous and exquisite fabric in creation. And that olive-skinned mestiza I saw, half emigrated Spaniard and half native Indian, with her loose jet-black hair eighty inches long, how interesting she would be as a social attraction-or an advertisement!

Another result of annexation has apparently escaped attention. When the Stars and Stripes float over the land which Magellan discovered and the city which Legaspi founded, presumably the native products will enter the United States free of duty. In that case the cheap cigar, and to some extent the more expensive cigar, of Cuba will disappear, and Key West may retire from business. Of Manila cigars, when I was there a few years ago, the yearly output was 140,000,000, besides tobacco. And what will become of the American cigarette, since

one of the score of factories in Manila turns out 38,000,000 a year? The Cigarette Trust must make haste to deploy its skirmishers.

Of all the results, however, big and little, of Philippine annexation, one stands out in sharp relief, dwarfing all the rest-the inevitable change in the relations of the United States and Great Britain. If America annexes the Philippines, a distinct and formal understanding with England is imperative for her, and certain. This certainty is only perceived yet by few people in this country, but in Europe every statesman sees it at a glance. The Far Eastern question has superseded the Near Eastern question-just as Lord Rosebery prophesied that it would as the greatest international problem and the focus of the keenest coming struggle. I have no space here to set forth its vast complications; but, in a rough phrase, one may say that the fate of China has now taken the place of the fate of Turkey as the great question of the future. France is trying to put a commercial fence round the Southern provinces; Russia has already "jumped " Manchuria and will soon close it to other nations by a prohibitive tariff, if she is not prevented; Germany has demanded and secured "exclusive privileges" in one large province; Japan has ambitions so wide-reaching and world-affecting that she has not ventured yet to hint at them in public; England alone desires to keep China as it is-a country raising its revenue by a moderate tariff, developing as rapidly as may be in commercial enterprise, affording to the whole world, on equal terms, a market of 350,000,000 people. Now, these views are all in conflict among themselves, and, together with the score of smaller but still important issues, they keep the diplomatists busy to avoid a breach of the peace. As soon as the United States becomes possessed of a country in the Far East, situated in the center of traffic, so to speak, of 116,000 square miles and over seven millions of inhabitants, she takes a hand in the game, with a big stake upon the table. When the next diplomatic bout begins, she will be involved. However much she may desire it, she will not be able to remain a spectator. Her policy is settled for her beforehand. It would be fatal to her interests for China to become Russian and French and German. She must try to keep China for the Chinese. But that is British policy also. Therefore America and England will find themselves shoulder to shoulder, and, as soon as the first tug comes, they will mutually define their attitude once for all. That

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