religion they abhor and whose language they cannot speak. The Chinaman calls it civilizing, just the same as the European, to catch the wild islanders and teach them new ways, or drive them further back into the mountains while seizing and partitioning among themselves their rice lands and other property. The people live in villages walled by growing bamboo beside a ditch, as the natives of southern California used to throw around their ranchería a wall of cacti.

In the onward march of the Malay savage toward Chinese civilization, it is not until he has well advanced that the era of chop-sticks is reached, rice being conveyed to the mouth before that period by the fingers alone. They have long grown tobacco, which is made into cigars of liberal dimensions, six or eight inches long and an inch and a half thick, and smoked by men women and children; this comfort, with the betel-nut for booziness, tends to make life endurable, notwithstanding the sudden rise of imperialism in the United States. Japanese rule in Formosa has thus far proved little less harmonious than Spanish rule in the Philippines. The barbarous tribes of the interior revolted, and insurrection among the southern tribes resulted in battles fought near Taichu and Taihoku in which the natives met with defeat.

CHAPTER XIV

EUROPE IN ASIA

Now that the tsar has brought to the attention of the powers of the world the palpable absurdity of each maintaining a large number of its people as trained fighters, at the cost of the producing classes, for the purpose now and then of gladiatorial display, would it not be well for some one to call a convention to pass upon a few simple points which would make easier the duties of teachers? It would greatly simplify the course of education if a few questions were answered by those who determine the fate of nations, as, Is it settled that one people may seize and possess themselves of the property of another people if strong enough to do so? If not strong enough alone, may nations rightfully unite to despoil another nation? If so may they rightfully unite to despoil any nation? Call it settled as good politics that trained men-slayers may be turned into the forest to kill the inhabitants, or huddle them in corners to die, on the ground that these wild lands are required for purposes of civilization, and that civilization has a right to them; does this right of superior strength and culture apply as well to the half savage, or to the quarter savage; and if so how civilized must be the civilization, and how savage the savagism before the Author of all peoples, and all power, and all justice and humanity may be invoked to witness the righteousness of the robber's cause? Is Germany sufficiently civilized to capture and partition Central America on this hypothesis? May the powers unite and demand the division among them of Russia, where there is more waste land than in Africa? Spain wants a piece of China; suppose China were to demand the partition of Spain, or Italy, among the powers of Asia.that is to say the emperors of China and Japan, and Aguinaldo. emperor of the Philippines, could the plea be justly set up that Spain and Italy were too advanced and the powers of Asia

not advanced enough to permit of such a course? And this too when Romulus and Remus were sucking the wolf while the inhabitants of the Far East were studying the stars of heaven? Is isolation a crime? If not why is China punished for it? If so, how much of isolation may the anti-imperialists of the United States be permitted to indulge in before England has the international right to come thundering at our portal, demanding the door to be opened? Is exclusiveness a crime? If not, why is China punished for it? If so, why are not Australia and America punished for excluding the Chinese? Old men and old women and old nations are a nuisance and deserve obliteration; how old or weak or useless must a man or woman or nation become in order to justify extermination? Could some of these questions, round which the diplomats keep up their war dance, be settled for the benefit of the simple, how much clearer to the mind would be the studies of international ethics and economics!

Coming up from the south coastwise in 1590, Portuguese navigators sighted on their right high mountains covered with green foliage, and down whose sides fell silvery cascades on which danced the bright moonlight, while feathery bamboo fanned the terraced foothills below. "Ilha formosa!" they cried, "Beautiful isle!" And the Malayan or aboriginal name of Pekando was dropped, among foreigners at least, the island becoming known to commerce as Formosa. The Portuguese settled there, and for a time were unmolested by any of their friends from Europe.

But long before this, in 1514, the Portuguese had found themselves in a Chinese port, and three years later Andrada had made a trading voyage to Canton. And while at one time Formosa was under their sway, only Macao became a permanent dependency of the Portuguese in the Far East. Macao, once the seat of commerce in this region has fallen into decadence. Of the port and town the Portuguese obtained control in the latter part of the sixteenth century; merchants became wealthy as the town rose to be one of the chief commercial marts of the East, and well-filled storehouses and sumptuous dwellings followed. The Spaniards were on the coast of China soon after the Portuguese, trading there from the Philippines since 1543. Afterward, when Spain and Portugal were under one crown, they had two forts in Formosa.

Queen Elizabeth of England made unsuccessful advances to the emperor in 1596 to open trade with China, and another futile attempt was made in 1637, when Captain Weddell was sent with an English fleet to Canton. Holland found her way to the Far East, after securing independence in Europe, through war with Spain, attacking her Asiatic possessions and capturing Malacca. But repulsed at Macao in 1622, the Dutch gained a foothold in the Pescadores and in Formosa. Then in 1624 the Dutch appeared farther up the coast, and two years before the Spaniards came. The Spaniards were driven away by the Dutch in 1642, and the Dutch were driven away by the Chinese pirate, Koxinga, who proclaimed himself king. In 1683 Koxinga's successor was expelled by the emperor of China, who first made the island a dependency of Fukien province, and in 1887 erected it into a province of the empire. At the end of the war which broke out in 1894, the island was ceded to Japan, and the flag of the rising sun floated over Formosa.

The Dutchman De Vrees discovered the Kuriles in 1634, the Russians knowing nothing of these islands until 1711, when Kamchatka was visited by Japanese traders. After that the fur tax was collected there, and in 1795 the Russian American company established a factory at Urup.

The world, when first it became known to Europe in its entirety, was partitioned among the powers, the pope finally dividing the unclaimed remnant between Spain and Portugal. After some three centuries the American colonies for the most part achieved their independence. After a period of rest England turned her attention to modern territorial expansion, securing vast additions to her domain in Africa and in Asia. Russia, already possessor of a large part of the world, likewise began to add territory, so that most of the available lands of the temperate zones were in time secured by these two powers. Then France and Germany, perceiving somewhat late that they must have somewhere more lands or become second or third rate powers, set out in search of territory, and the struggle between them all has been fierce for a foothold in every part of the earth.

The policy which Count Goluchowski would have Europe enforce in Asia is the policy of foreign influence for the advancement of home interests, the policy of selfishness, of mo

nopoly, repression, and closed ports. Great Britain has ever contended for free commercial interchange for all the world, with local self-government, and the taxes of colonists to be imposed by themselves and for their own benefit.

Obviously the inhabitants of equatorial regions are not such as rise to culture and self-government, and are destined therefore to be ruled by some power stronger than themselves. In pursuance of the law based upon the tendencies of the race to the gratification of its ever-increasing necessities, the bountiful food-producing areas under the equator are fast falling into northern hands. Now that so much of this so greatly to be desired domain has been unexpectedly added to our republic, what folly it would be to relinquish it either to those too weak to hold it, or to those whose passion and policy it is to grasp and hold too much.

Western civilization has the ascendancy the world over, and were the nations united they might easily parcel out and possess the remainder of the earth among them. But robbery must have a reason; there must be present always some moral, political, or commercial necessity to serve as an excuse for the commission of national crimes; otherwise the remaining portions of weak and unappropriated Asia would soon be taken. Eternal justice has found its way thus far, but seems unable to abolish international crime altogether. Apart from Africa, the world's tropical lands are finding rapid partition. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, five millions of square miles of tropical lands were secured by continental Europe, while to the United States fell also some square miles. In the conquest and partition of the world, it is not difficult to understand the principle on which the plan is worked in cases where the occupants of valuable lands are naked savages. It is the right of the strong to despoil the weak; and so the aboriginal Americans are killed off almost to a man, Australia is burned over, and Africa is divided. But why China next? The celestial empire has returned to earth and is now rapidly enrobing in the new civilization, which Europe says she must wear or die. Awhile ago it was European religion that defenceless savages must adopt; now it is European culture, the sincerity of the French, the integrity of the Italian, and the honor of the Spaniard must be imitated in order to be saved. Certain beasts of the forest, when one of their number becomes old