in finding themselves so suddenly subjugated, as they had heard nothing of the fall of Manila or of war with the United States. In taking for a coaling-station the only good harbor on the island of Guam, which was also the capital of the group, the harbor facilities for the other islands would be so small that they would scarcely be worth having. So it was argued at the time of this brilliant conquest.

The Ladrones, the Carolines, and the Gilbert and Marshall groups comprise Micronesia. The Ladrones, where the natives are nearly extinct, was formerly a penal settlement of Spain. The Caroline group of five high islands, of basaltic formation, are of rare beauty. The natives as first seen were naked, fierce, and elaborately tattooed. The Marshall and Gilbert groups are coral islands, six or eight feet above the sea, growing breadfruit, the cocoa palm, and pandananas, or screw pine. The question of territory rights, long disputed between European powers, was settled in 1885 by the pope, who gave the Carolines to Spain, the Marshall islands to Germany, leaving for England the Gilbert group.

CHAPTER XXV

RACE PROBLEMS

All

As to the origin of humanity, in its various phases, we know as much as did the babel-builders, and no more. mankind are so nearly alike anatomically as to suggest a single first pair for the race, while from such differences as form, features, color of skin, and mode of speech, some have argued autochthonic origin. But while the wisest are still in the dark as to some things, regarding other points affecting the human race the most ordinary observer may speak with confidence.

Thus we see in hot lands people dark of skin, with never a tropical white man, and never a black man indigenous to high latitudes. Native to the temperate zone is the dusky skin, at least we find it there,-as the coppery hued American and the yellow Asiatic. On islands and mainland are many apparent intermixtures of black white and yellow. As to the white man proper, Mount Caucasus is not between cancer and capricorn, and is well removed from both the arctic and antarctic.

Other things we may know, namely, that while for a time and with care the several races may live anywhere on the globe, unless it be at or near the poles, the white man cannot live and labor permanently in the tropics, though the black man seems to adapt himself well enough to temperate climes. Indeed, of all the tropical races the African negro is the best all-round working man for hot and temperate climates, in so far as of his own accord he will work at all, while of the indigenes of the temperate zone the Chinaman is the best worker for both hot and cold climates. It is a fact learned by observation, rather than a question for discussion, that the Caucasian cannot live and labor and healthily and properly develop in tropical countries. True, he may dilute his blood

with that of a tropical native, become acclimated, and so get along in a mongrel fashion, but in that case he is no longer a Caucasian.

Among the non-workers of the world are the American Indians and the tropical islanders. Anglo-saxons came over and worked the lands now covered by the United States; Spaniards and Portuguese intermixed and bred hybrids to fill the place of working-men in Latin America; while the Scotch fur-traders kept the woods of Canada a game preserve as long as possible, with the lords aboriginal as hunters, protecting them from the influences of civilization for that purpose. When colonization came, the half-breed offspring of the furtraders made tolerably good agriculturalists. Negro, Indian, and Spaniard perform some tropical labor, as in Cuba and other isles of the Antilles; negro, Malay, and Spanish mixed may be called Filipino, while for the Hawaiian islander, and others of that caste, the Chinese and Japanese together do their work.

Another self-evident fact is that certain races under certain conditions tend to disappear, while other races which have thus far come to the knowledge of history, have elected to remain. Thus the American Indian and the tropical islander, the Australian bushman and the South African savage, the non-workers of the world, inevitably fade away in the presence of European civilization. Inoculate these savages with foreign blood, and some of the progeny may be preserved, as in Mexico and Canada, but most of it were better not preserved, as in Hawaii for example. The African seems suited with American life, but by himself in his tropical island republic he is a failure; where he fattens in the house of the southern planter, an Apache would die of heart or lung disease.

It is equally plain to be seen that some races tend to improve in culture and refinement while others deteriorate; some are becoming more and more civilized, while others are either yet savages or are stricken in their development by dry-rot. Implanted in the Nahuas and Mayas of Mexico and Central America, and in the Peruvians of South America, was the well-defined germ of an indigenous civilization, which if it had not been crushed by the conquerors would have developed into a culture no less original than wonder

ful. No where else in America, and in few other places in the world, was there any such manifestation.

Some of the questions which may be asked, and not all of them difficult to answer, are: Is there any one race, or stock, of humanity of proved and pronounced superiority to all others? If so is it well, or otherwise, to cultivate and breed from that stock for the world's coming humanity, so far as practicable, in preference to the propagation of poorer stock? The fittest survive, we are told; if this be true, to what extent, if any, is it right and proper for us to aid in the carrying out of this law of God and Nature?

In how far is it wise and legitimate to encourage the fittest and discourage the unfittest to survive? Cannot enough of the best humanity be bred to allow us to dispense altogether with the inferior article? Is it not cheaper to grow all good men than to try to make over the bad? Our pilgrim fathers acted upon this principle, they and their successors; the Indian is all bad, they said, except when he is dead; and so they killed him. We of to-day have undertaken a more difficult task, which is to whitewash Africans, Asiatics, and mongrel breeds with European civilization. Some of the white may adhere, but the duskiness is always sure to show through. "It is the duty of civilized nations to take charge of the barbarians and give them a white man's government ", said Cecil Rhodes. The United States is one of the great powers, and cannot escape this duty." Why is it our duty, can Mr Rhodes tell, when we can be better employed in making better men?

We cannot convey our higher ideals of life to people of lower development, without having with us the power to enforce; for it is the nature alike of all, whether of high or low degree, without the influence of environment to sink to lower levels, and with or without the aid of environment, it is better always to grow plants and animals from the best stock.

There are few who question the innate superiority of white. men over those of the various shades which distinguish all others from the Aryan race. History clearly shows that from the first the white man has dominated the world, and at no period more completely than now. It makes no difference liberating the enslaved or educating the ignorant; it makes no difference the examples of men or nations that have risen

and displayed marked abilities; the one fact proves all, that there is not now and never has been on the earth a people civilized, or half or quarter civilized, with a very dark skin that has risen to strength or prominence in the direction of military prestige or good government. Though the earlier civilizations sprang up where the conditions of life were most favorable, that is to say in tropical regions, whose inhabitants are usually but not always dark of skin, they were in the old world of Aryan stock, and white. The others, like the Arabians, Egyptians, and Carthaginians, did not remain. The Aztecs and Peruvians of the American aboriginal civilizations, and occupying the tropical table lands of North and South America, were for the most part white, or nearly so,white, while the savage inhabitants of the surrounding lowlands, their subjects and slaves, were dark, some of them quite black. Not that the quality of mind and morals is necessarily governed by the color of the skin; but the fact remains that the white peoples always have been and are now the rulers and regulators of the world.

In every aboriginal nation there is present either native endurance, or the elements of decay in the presence of superior civilization. The Aztecs and Peruvians, themselves civilized, many of them as much so as their conquerors, declined to disappear before the Spaniards, and the greatest modern as well as ancient statesmen and poets of Mexico and South America have been native Indians. In the north, being of a hardy race, and held aloof from contact with civilization that they might the better hunt, many of the natives remain as Indians or half breeds. The aborigines of the United States had the grace to die; those of them who were not killed by emigrants and gold-hunters, and so saved themselves extermination in other forms. The 300,000 estimated Hawaiian islanders seen by Cook diminished under kind treatment to 30,000, and their final extinction is only a question of time. On the other hand, European civilization transplanted to America in the form of Anglo-saxon stock, not only lives and thrives, but exercises a retroactive influence on the mother country. The seeds of intellectual and political liberty from the New World, scattered abroad about Europe, are beginning to take root in places and bear fruit. And finally, in literature, art, manufactures, and commerce the