unpunished criminals; widows were buried alive with their husbands who had died; children were sacrificed under the feet of elephants as a religious duty; the systems of caste killed hope and reduced the poor to a condition of animalism; ignorant, brutal, corrupt Oriental despots revelled in licentious splendor, while their subjects died of famine and disease; internal revolutions and disorder added to the general misery and degradation.

Were England to give up India to-day, if there were no other foreign interference, it would become another South America in twenty-five years.

To-day there are numerous colleges affiliated with the five great universities; there are normal schools, medical schools, technical training-schools, engineering schools, and agricultural colleges. There are hospitals and dispensaries and competent medical and surgical practitioners.

Above all, the Indian government since 1870 has been strongly encouraging agriculture, establishing experimental farms, schools of chemistry and science as applied to the soil, new appliances, machinery, crop rotation, manures, seeds, the breeding of livestock, etc.

In 1901-1902 the land actually under cultivation in India was 199,710,722 acres, the crops being as follows:

Of the above 27,634,536 acres raised more than one crop, making a total acreage under one crop of 227,345,258.

It must also be noted that a vast amount of the land of India is under irrigation, and that some of those canal systems are among the most important in the world. Some of the principal irrigating systems are as follows:

The Godavari, Kistna, and Cauvery systems in Madras irrigate 2,364,655 acres, and there are altogether about twenty millions of acres under irrigation.

It is, of course, impossible in this brief article to enter into the details of the vast commercial and manufacturing interests of India, its finances, the income and expenditures of the government, railways, newspapers, posts and telegraphs, public roads (of which there are nearly 200,000 miles, about 40,000 being macadamized), and many other matters of equal importance and interest. But enough has been said to make every intelligent American pause and think. Contrast the results of England's policy in India with that of the United States with reference to South America. Compare, item by item, the material, moral, and intellectual status of these peoples, their conditions a century ago and to-day. After making such a comparison every reader must agree that the Monroe Doctrine is academic balderdash, advocated only by theorists who go about the world with their eyes shut, ignorant of the facts.

F

CHAPTER III

FRENCH, RUSSIAN, AND GERMAN EXPANSION

RANCE cannot be regarded as a colonizing power in the same

sense as is England; but her foreign possessions are nevertheless large and important. The reader who will compare the colonial territories of France with our own dependencies will be surprised at the vastness of the former and the insignificance of the latter. France proper, consisting of eighty-seven departments, or 204,092 square miles, had a population in 1901 of 38,595,500. But her colonies and dependencies contain nearly twenty times the territory of the mother country and fifty per cent more population. They are as given below, the Central Africa statistics being, according to the Statesman's Year Book, necessarily rough estimates. From this it will be seen that the total area of France and her dependencies is 4,293,168 square miles, and the total population more than 92,000,000.

As France is increasing in population very slowly, if at all, it would appear that the vast colonial territories will be ample to meet the requirements of her national activities for generations to come, and it would seem that many of them are destined to be ultimately populated, if not actually controlled, by the citizens of other nations.

Next to the unparalleled extension of the British Empire and the no less marvellous growth of our own country, the most impressive fact in the world's history is the tremendous advance of Russia, an extension of territory and an increase of population which may well make the most enthusiastic Englishman or American pause.

In 1804 the population of Russia did not reach forty millions; in 1904 it exceeds one hundred and forty millions. At the present time and for several years past, the natural increase of the Russian population has averaged two millions a year, while in the movement of population, despite a widespread belief to the contrary, emigration and immigration almost balance each other. Obviously we cannot undertake to give even an outline of the historical events involved in each successive accretion of territory and power by this empire.

In the tenth century Russia occupied only about half of its present

European extension, and even as late as 1648 its territory in the northeastern part of Europe did not extend to the Ural Mountains. But in the next one hundred and fifty years a mighty stride forward was taken, and the whole northern part of Asia, comprising a territory as large as the continent of South America and with pretty much the same diversity of population, became an integral part of the empire.

To-day Russia comprises an area of 8,660,395 square miles, or about one sixth of the total land surface of the globe, the greatest body of contiguous territory ever brought together under one form of government.

What is to be the future of this mighty empire is at the present time extremely difficult of prediction. In the war with Japan the Russian government displayed an extraordinary impotency. Her peasantry forms an excellent soldiery, but the corruption and inefficiency of her administrative organization brought disaster after disaster upon her. The tyranny of the Russian government has been so great in the past that the intellectual development of the people has been retarded and their moral sense blunted. A nation is qualified to control vast areas and govern great populations only in proportion as it in good faith promotes civilization and the betterment of humanity. That means the establishment of justice, the extension of liberty and education, the development of material prosperity and moral improvement. Injustice, ignorance, prejudice, passion, crime, corruption, immorality, - these are all phases of anarchy, and this latter means dissolution, dismemberment, disunion, separation, secession. Russia has presented the strange spectacle of a great nation trying to hold itself together by the adoption of the methods and policies which inevitably have an opposite effect. In proportion as there is tyranny there must be resistance, unless the people are in a merely animal state; and the wider the area over which this tyranny is exercised, the more powerful must this opposition become. Great territories can be held in union only by reducing resistance or opposition to the established order to a negligible quantity; and this can be done only by securing the adherence and affection of the people.

The Russian government is not worth fighting for, therefore the Russian people will not fight for it; but if the Russian people were in earnest, they would make a government worth fighting for, and then fight for it if it were necessary.

Here, then, is a government which has expanded far beyond the bounds which it should be permitted to occupy. If the government were a good one, it would make no difference if Russia occupied all Europe. But it is not a good government; it is a tyranny, and ought not to be allowed to exercise sovereignty over one tenth of the territory which it now rules.

Russia, then, for the present may be disregarded in a consideration