By A.C.

A

PROMINENT financier of the Pacific Coast, who began life in the Bank of England and worked his way in a windjammer round the Horn, had gone back to his native land for the first time in many years. He was driving over the baronial acres of a friend, in one of those high jaunting carts drawn by a docktailed cob, when the lord of the manor met a workman in blue smock who failed to doff his slouch cap. Mile after mile, they had tooled over the soft level roads and not a workman till now had failed to "duck" to the landlord's formal touch of his whip to his hat.

The little lord of the domain-he belonged to an old county family and knew less of what was going on in the big outside world than many an American school boy-fairly snorted with fury.

"The influence of you Americans," he grumbled. "Not a county, not a hamlet, not a country from Turkey to Finland, from the Balkans to Iceland, that isn't inoculated with the poison of your confounded American rant and cant about everybody being as good as anybody, and a little better."

The Americanized banker burst into a shout of good-natured laughter. He couldn't deny the Englishman's indictment. He didn't want to; he knew it was

to the influence of the returned emigrant from the United States imbued with republican doctrine-with the realization of a man's worth as a man. There is not a hamlet in Italy where you will not hear young emigrants speaking the curious "dago" argot of Chicago or New York; and keen observers of the Balkan peoples in battle declare that the fiercest fighters. -men who rushed into hand to hand conflict with maniacal fury-were young fellows, who had worked as "shovel stiffs" and "floaters" on railroad construction gangs in the Western States, and had come back to fight for their Fatherland with republicanizing ideas of a strength compared to which our sedate American conservatism is as water unto wine. Whole construction gangs in the West were almost deserted by the return of young Montenegrins, to fight for freedom in their own land. It was the most complete Americanizing and democratizing of Europe ever demonstrated.

If this is true of Europe, what must be the influence contiguous to our very border-say in Mexico? What must it be in the Philippines, where doctor and nurse and school teacher and soldier are daily demonstrating what republicanism means? In fact, the conspiracy for the republicanizing of China was planned and fostered by Americanized and American-educated Chinese in San Francisco and Vancouver. The literature that fanned the revolution was printed in San Francisco and Vancouver. Madero laid

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his plot to oust Diaz in San Antonio, Texas; and the radicals of the Mexican revolution nursed their project in Los Angeles and early voiced it through American magazines.

The United States may disown these foster children of her brain; but it doesn't matter, whether they are disowned or not. It doesn't matter whether the United States goes to war over them or not. The President of the United States has declared to the world that the Washington Government will not sanction the pre-emption of another foot of territory. The fact remains that these nations took their inspiration to freedom.

from the United States; and quite apart from whether they are fit for freedom or not, look to this country for protection in the fight for their ideals; and President Wilson has justified their hope at least to the extent of refusing to acknowledge a dictatorship, and ordering other nations to keep "hands off".

But are we going it blind? Do we realize what we are in for? We may say we will not go to war, and we may endow a dozen peace temples. Peace temples didn't avert war in Rome, when

A PICTURESQUE FISHERMAN OF THE PHILIPPINES

the time came. If these unruly young members of the world's republics in the sudden rebound from despotism to freedom chance to insult other nations, it is on the United States that the burden of restoring order-of acting at once as policeman, advocate, judge, missionary, preacher, teacher-must fall. What does this imply? Consider for a little some brief bits of history.

When the emigration of European people to American shores set in, the United States had a leaven of thirty million. native stock to absorb and amalgamate the new comers. Have we absorbed them? Statistics prove that in the great cities of the East, there are twenty foreign-born, or descendants of foreignborn, for every resident of pure American stock. Ward gangs and ward bosses

herding foreign gangs to the polls already control the municipal governments of the big cities. Now take a look at figures. When immigration into the United States was at its high tide, a million and a half a year were passing into our ports. Of these, about half a million a year returned, leaving a net increase of foreign population of a million.

In the light of these figures consider the problem that has suddenly fallen to Uncle Sam in the republicanizing and policing and training for self-government of the young nations aspiring to a new freedom.

Mexico is officially credited with thirteen million people. Those, who know the land best, say the figures are closer to fifteen millions, of whom ninety per cent are peons-half-Indian, half-Spanish. The Spanish half of the strain certainly knows little of republicanism; and the Indian strain knows less. These people have had neither education, nor training in self-government. If they offend other nations, if they fail to give the masses justice in their new experiment, Uncle Sam must step in.

The Philippines are credited with a population of from seven to ten millions. Those who know the Islands best say the figures are too small by half; and a strange polyglot their population is-hill men, mountain tribes, fisher folk-Malays, Chinese, Japanese, half-blood Spanish, in a climate where the American can never outnumber the native, whether he goes as policeman, teacher, or preacher. Tuberculosis and malaria have caused more deaths among Americans there than war. Yet Uncle Sam must police, teach, and train these alien wild races to self-government. The Filipinos think they are fit for self-government. Uncle Sam vetoes their desire for it. Why?