hands of a child, who must guide it between reefs and sandbanks, exposed to the hostile winds of revolution, factional dangers, the cliffs of unions and nonunions, and the sirens of bossism. It would indeed be a dangerous voyage.

Our present pilot has certainly kept good watch, ready for the slightest movement of the compass, any indication of political mischief, ever ready to sacrifice his own ideas upon the altar of the common weal, the supreme policy of the state, and the destiny of the fatherland. Take it all in all, it would be a difficult journey under different guidance, and not even the greatest expert could guarantee, to use a commercial expression, the dividends of so risky an enterprise. All good patriots can easily visualize the shipwreck that would threaten the country.

In treating of this sincere anxiety felt by all true Spaniards, one would not be telling the whole truth without mentioning, as a kind of counterbalance to sensationalism, the fact that there has been a certain suspicion that the rumor of the abdication was simply a manœuvre to stimulate the dynastic sympathies of the people, or at least to put them to the proof. It is a wellknown phenomenon that the masses are prone to a disposition to compassion, mourning, and other emotional demonstrations, becoming violent partisans of some personage whom they regard as illtreated, only to turn upon him fickly to-morrow. It would therefore not be a matter for surprise if certain subtle elements among us, familiar with these psychological reactions of the masses, did not shrink from recourse to them in order to regain the approval of the public. Possibly the spreaders of the abdication report hoped that the whole nation would rise as one man and fervidly pe

tition the King to retain the crown upon his own head and not pass it to another.

If this was the case, the calculation was a futile one, for nobody has said a single word of mourning or made a supplicating gesture, proving either that the country is quite indifferent to the question of abdication, or that it lacks confidence in the champions of the Crown. In any case, the prestige of the Crown has undoubtedly suffered considerably by the incident.

As a matter of fact, it may be said en passant that the Crown of Spain is rather unfortunate in its partisans and incense-bearers. Here is an illuminating example. Two representatives of the Spanish aristocracy, the wellknown Marquis de Comillas and Count de Güell, offered to build a royal palace in the city of Barcelona. But from promise to realization is a long step. These gentlemen provided the idea an excellent one, as may be seen the money was to be collected from those patriotic Spanish emigrants in America who are the natural prey of so many schemers and speculators on this side of the Atlantic, who count on the sentimental devotion of the emigrant to help them keep sharp the swords of our picturesque chivalry.

- but

The titled gentlemen mentioned actually dispatched a representative to Buenos Aires with the patriotic mission of collecting some thousand pesetas, to replace what they had been obliged to disburse; for monarchical fervor is one thing and its financing quite another. On the contrary, one may be very dynastic and very aristocratic without caring to risk one's fortune in maintaining this noble attitude; while one may be also very plebeian and republican, like many of these Spanish emigrants, and yet contribute to the building of a royal residence, because it is not necessary to

invite a confusion of ideas on the subject of what form of government is best for the country, no doubt symbolized in this case by the royal-palace project.

This was doubtless the line of thought of the Marquis and the Count, but it was certainly not that of the Spanish colony in Buenos Aires, which turned its back on the emissary of the nobility and his idea of making a gift with other people's money. The overseas Spaniards very naturally believed that if anybody desired to prove his loyalty to the Crown he should do this at his own cost, as every neighbor's son is wont to do when he wants to show his attachment and his generosity.

The result is that we see the King in danger of having to disavow the Marquis and the Count, as well as their transatlantic representative, and incidentally renounce the plan of a royal palace in an inhospitable city boiling with discontent. Barcelona is not Madrid, and, by its own testimony, can never be a suitable home for royalty.

In the meantime the King has contented himself with denying that he entertained any intention of abdicating, as had been announced by the newspaper. We breathe more easily, and are happy to learn from this authoritative source that the crown of Spain does not appear to be one of those loosely attached crowns like those of Germany, Austria, and Greece, and

formerly Portugal, which, at the least jostling of political disturbance, wabbled on the heads of their august bearers and fell to earth among the feet of the mob, in the monarchs' wild dash for safety. What-after losing their crowns, risk the loss of their heads as well? Never!

Once more let us breathe easily. Our institutions are secure. The pilot will not abandon the helm to inexpert and unsteady hands. The vessel will not run aground. The special services of the great delayer of revolution will not be needed, though he stands ready to expose himself heroically to every danger to save the fatherland from shipwreck.

Let us proceed to a general election and elect half the legislature from among the sons, brothers, and other relatives of the office-holding class, and the other half from the ranks of the new rich. We will forget the politicians and the military, but avoid becoming unpopular with administrative circles. Let us proceed to the pacification of Morocco as modestly and decently as may be, and not with our haughty noses in the air. Then we can look for a pretext to start a war with Catalonia or with Portugal, so that in fifteen or twenty years we shall be justified in opening a new moral campaign in favor of the 'responsibilities' that will be called for!

No abdication here!

VOL. 317-NO. 4114

In the sixth decade of the eighteenth century occurred a dispute between the British Government and some colonists in North America over comparatively insignificant taxation problems. Burke and a few men with vision realized that what was here involved was no trivial wrangle, but a matter of high principle. The Government and the country were unable to recognize the mighty issue at stake, and a revolution followed that brought into existence a gigantic World Power, and profoundly changed the course of the history of our planet, so far as we can judge, not merely for two or three centuries, but for thousands of years to come.

A similar apathy at home, lack of understanding because of lack of interest, surrounds the struggle for freedom of 10,000 white men in the heart of Africa. In 1760 most literate Englishmen vaguely knew where Massachusetts was, but in 1923 we doubt whether one quarter of our people, if led to a map of the globe, could within two minutes put a finger on Kenya. It may seem sensational and far-fetched to record the belief that this little-known Kenya question involves, for the future of our Empire, issues of policy more important than any that have confronted the peoples living under the Union Jack since the revolt in the Thirteen Colonies. Setting aside such struggles for our national existence as those with Napoleon and the Kaiser, we nevertheless believe that such may prove to be the case.

Kenya is the 'last white man's country' available for colonization by Englishmen, where a great and rich civilization, becoming in time a rival to that

of the Mississippi Valley, can arise. Nature has showered on the East African Highlands her richest gifts. In Kenya great cotton-plantations may be developed that shall emancipate England from her present economically disastrous dependence upon the Southern States of America for this staple of our great Midlands industry. Fields of grain, rivaling those of the Western prairies, and the untapped resources of an inconceivably rich and gigantic region, are ours if we work for them; and here in Kenya, as in no other undeveloped dependency of the British Crown, the climate permits white men in their millions to lead healthy lives and to raise families. Before this will be altogether true, certain tropical diseases must be stamped out; but medical science has already conquered these elsewhere, and an expenditure of three or four million pounds would eradicate from the entire area suitable for settlement all those human plagues which now render Kenya less healthy than England.

Such is the vision of the future which those pioneers who have gone out into this promised land paint for us. But is Kenya to be a white man's country? There are four times as many Indians as white men in the colony to-day. Indian-Nationalists demand equality in all civic rights for the brown man against the white. So strong is the feeling aroused among Indians on this question that the Kenya problem has become of vital importance in our relations with India.

In a recent debate on the subject in the Indian Council of State, the claim was put forward by speaker after

speaker that Kenya represents an outlet for the vast surplus population of the Peninsula, and that if England denies equal rights to the Indian settlers disastrous consequences may follow in India itself, owing to apprehended explosions of popular feeling. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the British statesman upon whom responsibility for the peace of India depends should espouse the cause of Kenya Indians against the whites.

Lord Peel, Secretary of State for India, told a large meeting of Members of Parliament on Tuesday that there should be no differentiation in dealing with the emigration question as between native Indians and white citizens of the Dominions. He declared, as his predecessors have done, that the question of settlement in Kenya is no matter affecting merely local interests of the Colony, but has become an Imperial issue. This is, indeed, true. But it is an Imperial issue in a far broader sense than conceived by those politicians who ignore the possibilities of the development of East Africa by white men, in and for an Empire that is and must remain predominantly a white man's Empire.

At present two delegations from Kenya are on their way to argue their respective claims before the Colonial Office. Sir Robert Coryndon, Governor of the Colony, and a representative delegation of white settlers are coming to plead their cause, together with an Indian Committee representing the more numerous Indian inhabitants.

We have made some study of the position that exists in Kenya, and we have no hesitancy in stating that any attempt to conciliate Indian sentiments by making the Indians the overlords of the Colony will have incalculably disastrous effects. If the Government cannot look ahead and see the vision of the great future white man's

Dominion, giving back to us what we lost through our own folly when we threw away America, let them consider more immediate and more narrow perils.

To give the Indians what they ask, exact legal and political equality, means turning over 10,000 white men, and several millions of the bravest and most warlike African natives, to the control of 40,000 Indians. The white men will not, they assure us, submit to their fate without a struggle. There is every reason to believe that this is true. No sturdy pioneers of our own stock would ever submit, excepting at the point of the bayonet, to control by a mob of brown men, mostly, at that, of the lower castes, or of no caste. One white Englishman in India is accustomed to govern a thousand natives; is there any reason to suppose that in East Africa that same white man would consent to be ruled by four Indians?

Let us think this thing out to the end. If the Government gives in to clamor from India, white Kenya will refuse to obey, and will, as it easily can, enforce its own terms upon the brown inhabitants of the country, as it has already dominated the vastly more numerous and more warlike blacks. Are we, then, prepared to send troops, white or Indian, to maintain a brown hegemony in East Africa?

The question answers itself. Kenya's white men have nothing to fear from the martial prowess of the Indians. But assuming the impossible, granting that 40,000 Indians are installed in control of the Colony, what would the hundreds of thousands of native black warriors do? They respect and fear the white man because the white man has met and defeated their ancestors in battle. They neither respect nor fear the brown man, because they know well enough, with the unerring intuition that savages and children possess, that

were it not for the white man they could without the slightest difficulty cut the throats of every brown man in East Africa within three days.

On every ground-the highest and most statesmanlike forethought for future generations, as well as the thought which the politician takes for the morrow, but never for the week after next the duty of the Government is clear. Whatever embarrassment may be caused in India, Kenya must remain a white man's country. Indian settlers should be assured equality before the law, should be given a voice in local affairs, but they should not be permitted to govern the white settlers.

It has never been the practice of men of our race, engaged in conquering

virgin countries from nature, to oppress or maltreat the people of inferior races; and once their superior status is recognized, our white pioneers in East Africa forerunners, we believe, of the millions of the future will show themselves fair and just to their Indian as to their African fellow subjects. But let us choose the wrong turning in this matter, and we shall be defied by the men of Kenya as once before by the men of New England, and the result will be the same.

Let us not again leave the future generations the melancholy task of lamenting over the lack of vision possessed by their ancestors, when these drove to desperation and to separate action a handful of loyal Britons drawn from our best blood.

To describe Japan is more than a daring venture: it is as impossible as describing the rainbow to a blind man. Japan does not yield itself easily and the most profound Western scholar is not alone in finding that he does not know it to the bottom; and so I must confine myself to scattered sketches drawn at random, impressions of the moment, which are perhaps useful in enabling the German at home to form some acquaintance with one aspect or another of Japan.

When we Europeans see scattered Japanese here and there we get the impression that they all look alike, but

this error speedily leaves the mind of the attentive observer and makes room for exactly the opposite idea. It is really possible to maintain that the differences among the types of Japanese faces are greater than among Western faces, and this can be readily explained. The enormous intellectual development that has gone on among these people in the last forty or fifty years necessarily left its trace on their faces, but it has not yet had time to stamp them all with a single mould. We find minds of every stage of culture, or better, of every stage of civilization, side by side.