the Philippines while it can be done without sacrifice of honor. The roll of such Americans would be found to contain many names conspicuous for high character, civic virtue, and lofty patriotism. One strong argument which these gentlemen advance takes the form of this query: "Are we consistent in preaching the Monroe Doctrine for the American continent when, at the same time, we are reaching out and occupying forcibly a great archipelago in the Eastern Hemisphere?" They claim that our position before the world and our advocacy of that famous doctrine are weakened by this incongruity, and they assert that were the whole body of facts laid before the voters in a plebiscite the verdict would be "Withdraw from the Philippines." Personally, I cannot think that the whole group and all it contains, even if exploited for our own selfish interests, are worth one good American life, such, for instance, as that of my late friend Lieutenant Walter Rodney, brutally murdered in Mindanao, as I write, by a native juramentado, running amok.

So far as the South American republics are concerned, their ultimate safety lies in combination. Sooner or later this is certain to come about, either in political union or alliances which shall relieve them of the occasion and the cost of navies. Incidentally they will then be able themselves to guarantee the operation of the Monroe Doctrine, and thus spare the United States the necessity of keeping up a great fleet for this sole purpose.

These considerations go far to establish the fact that navies are chiefly political in nature, and that where a great navy exists behind it must lie some potent if unrevealed international motive. It would be unfair to hold that it is always and only due to Jingoism, or to the moneyed interests that find their profit in the manufacture and sale of

battleships, armor, guns, and munitions of war, powerful as these influences are honestly believed to be by certain writers on the subject.

European countries are in a different category from those of South America. Their languages are not the same, their institutions, traditions, aspirations wholly dissimilar. Mutual agreement they may effect, but political amalgamation is out of the question; and even mutual agreement bristles with difficulties arising from international or racial distrusts, jealousies, possibly animosities. In what way can they be induced to recast their military systems?

The question is practical in the highest degree, notwithstanding the contentions of those humanitarians who find in public opinion an all-sufficient weapon against the peace-breaker. Possibly they are right when speaking in the future tense, but we are living in the present, and the logic of facts is, unhappily, against them. It is an admitted duty of the State to protect its subjects, failure to do so being unpardonable. Wise rulers must, therefore, be convinced, before taking steps to lessen the burden of armaments, that these steps do not sacrifice this necessary and obligatory defence. The world's history is largely one of war. It would be childish to blind our eyes to this melancholy truism; but just as in the mechanical world things are done every day which, a few years ago, would have been scouted as impossible, had they been fore-imagined, so there is no reason to despair of introducing much less intrinsically improbable developments into international politics. The pessimist has his own place and salutary functions, but progress is due to the optimist. Why be afraid of optimism in this connection? Or why scoff at it as preposterous and visionary?

Advance towards the imperfect civ

The

ilization of to-day has been along welldefined lines. At first the family was the social unit; then came kinship. In these two states every man was a law unto himself, unchecked save by dread of his neighbor. Later was the tribe, with subjection to a chief who dispensed justice, such as it was, while not wholly denying to the individual his right of private vengeance. tribes lastly united with others to form the nation with, ultimately, organized courts to settle all disputes, whether affecting persons or property, and a police to enforce their decrees and maintain order. The individual looks to the State for protection and to the State he has surrendered his right of personal vengeance. Theoretically this is the condition of affairs to-day, yet even the Anglo-Saxons have only recently discarded the duel. Men now living may have heard or read at the time of a British Prime Minister sending a challenge, an episode referred to by Mr. Balfour in his recent Guildhall speech; while duels, however innocuous according to the humorist, are still in Vogue across the Channel.

The advocates of universal peace must have patience, must be content with a steadily growing public sentiment in favor of their aims and with the continued progress now making towards their goal, rather than despair because the whole measure of disarmament is not immediately feasible. If the disappearance of the exercise of private vengeance on the part of the individual be cited as a precedent, allowance must be made for the time element. However much they may regret the slowness with which the world moves, yet, as Galileo said,

E pur si muove,

for it has already reached the point when the reference to The Hague of very thorny disputes is unattended by the loss of national dignity.

After all, wherein does the real power of a court reside? In the justice and wisdom of its findings? Not at all. The disappointed plaintiff, or the defendant cast in heavy damages, has no holy respect for either judge, jury, or statute.

No rogue e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law.

None the less, having lost his case, he conforms to the orders of the court without delay, because he knows that back of the court is the police of the town, or city, or county or State, supported, if need be, by the nation's entire army and navy. Resistance is futile. He may loathe the whole judicial scheme and machinery, but he fears the strong hand that sustains them and makes obedience to them imperative.

Herein is The Hague's weak point: it lacks the means to enforce its decrees. Consequently it is but a court of arbitration pure and simple, pronouncing its verdict on the subject at issue only when the two litigants agree in advance to abide by that verdict. It is not yet a court to which one nation may apply for justice against another nation. International law has not attained the development and authority of statute and common law. Until it does, the peoples of the earth are going to see that their fleets are powerful and their armies equipped with the latest things in rifles and aeroplanes. Up to the present moment war has been almost the normal state, and when not actually engaged in hostilities the nations have been whetting their tomahawks and casting jealous and angry eyes on their neighbors across the border. Naturally they find it very difficult to abandon the practice, horrid though it be.

But, suppose some strong Government whose motives are above suspicion, which has nothing to gain by the new order of things, after recognizing

existing boundaries on the principle of uti possidetis, and likewise recognizing the right of every country to regulate its affairs in its own fashion within those boundaries, were to invite the other strong nations to unite in threatening to intervene jointly on the side of any Government which agreed to submit international differences to The Hague should hostilities become imminent, and against the other refusing so to submit its case? The Hague tribunal would then become a real court, with a visible and overwhelming police to compel acceptance of its judgments even against a party in absentia. The matter in question would be adjudicated on its merits, even if one party obstinately refused to appear in court, and the decision would stand. In some such manner as this the dream of the two young men who, many years ago, pondered over this great problem may yet come substantially, if not exactly, true. The suggestion is at least in consonance with the growth of the nation from its origin in the family. That nations should ever be willing to give up their right of private vengeance seems to the majority of persons to-day absurd and fantastic in the extreme. In the same spirit their great-grandfathers scouted the idea of abandoning the duel as not in keeping with a proper sense of honor, but swords are no longer worn and gentlemen realize that disgrace lies in their own words and deeds, not in what others say of them.

All this may not happen for years to come, but the trend of events is in that direction, for in it is the only practical path of advance if the affairs of nations are to continue their development on lines parallel to those of the affairs of individual men-a logical and consistent supposition. It is hard The Nineteenth Century and After.

to believe that any of the chief Powers could eventually decline to enter into such a compact, excepting for the moment Russia, which still has a bone to pick with Japan, a consideration which makes one less sanguine of the immediate acceptance of such a peace-assuring measure.

If, or when (for I am convinced that sooner or later this notion of Sir George Clarke's and mine will virtually govern international relations), the bright day dawns when the principal Powers shall combine to give The Hague tribunal the physical force it now lacks, the necessity for great armies and navies will disappear. It is simpler and more discreet to assume good grounds for their existence than to hint at sinister motives, and it is surely wiser to remove those grounds than to advocate an universal reduction of armaments which no Government is ready to inaugurate.

I have elsewhere said that peace is not so much a condition as a frame of mind. When everybody wants it, wars will cease. For this reason I feel that much time and discussion will be needed before the suggestion made in this writing can be generally accepted. As the English-speaking peoples are taking one long stride in the ways of peace, one is not too foolishly optimistic who dares hope they will eventually, either separately or together, take this next and even more important step. It will have far-reaching and beneficent consequences, since it follows, as clearly as any effect follows any established cause, that, the grounds for the swollen armaments of to-day being removed, armies and navies, where retained at all, will automatically shrink to such proportions as the local necessities shall dictate.

Caspar F. Goodrich.

I.

There is a deep wide glen in the far North-West of Scotland whose Gaelic name might be rendered into English as "The Glen of Blueness," blue haze lies on the mountains that cradle it, a mighty range of purple Bens lies across the head of it, the sky reflects itself in small sapphire lochs sleeping in its hollows, and the seaazure enough at times-washes its lower end. This western glen makes a fine bit of color on a summer's day, and its curious blueness is perhaps more marked because up the length of it from the sea to the Great Range there runs a broad white road.

The road does not run straight,there is nothing straight in the country of the Celts,-but curves and twists into the foldings of the hills, yet from the sea upward it holds the eye continually as it appears and reappears, doubling and redoubling, till a pinewood seven miles inland receives it, and the imagination, led on with it so far, continues to see it still clambering steeply upward till it reaches the watershed among the Great Bens and the famous Pass of the Diridh Mor.1

Eighty years ago, when roads in that country were few and far between, this road twisted and climbed up the Blue Glen as it twists and climbs to-day; and eighty years ago, on a sunny summer morning, the twin daughters of Sir Ronald M'Pherson of Lyne sat watching it from the terrace in front of Lyne House. It was evident from their anxious glances towards it that they expected company, and they appeared to be extraordinarily downcast by the prospect.

They were such young ladies as we may see nowadays only by looking on 1 The Great Pass.

the portraits of our great-grandmothers, quaint half-childish figures, shy and gentle and shrinking and demure. Strange round sun-bonnets shaded their complexions from the sun, their hands were busied with embroideries of long ago, there was about them a timid grace that would nowadays seem a little pathetic. Their names were Elizabeth and Amabel, and they were motherless poor young maidens, and had been brought up by a grim old greataunt with a strictness that would sound harsh indeed to modern ears. They were so pretty that it was a pleasure to look at them, and in their high-waisted white muslin frocks, frilled and furbelowed as though for a gala day, they might well have sat for a picture. Both were fair, with eyes as blue as the bluest depths of the Blue Glen; both dressed their curls high on their heads and twisted into them a knot of blue ribbon; both had skins like the petals of the wild rose and lips like rosebuds. Yet with all their youth and beauty and innocence they were in trouble, and their eyes were wet,-Amabel because she was sorry for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth because the ruthless minutes were bringing down the white road of the Blue Glen a suitor for her hand.

"Amabel," said Elizabeth, her voice sharpened by distress, "there they are there on the bend!"

Amabel started up and looked out eagerly, shading her eyes with her hand, and there sure enough she saw a couple of horsemen cantering along the road perhaps a mile away.

"I must tell Farquhar," said Amabel, all in a flurry. "Oh, I hope the dinner will be as father wishes it!"

She darted into the house, a sadly dilapidated and decayed old mansion,

and after informing a shabby retainer of the approach of her father and his guest, and flying hither and thither to make sure that all was as it ought to be, she returned to the terrace.

Elizabeth was in tears.

"I shall never marry him," she sobbed. "It is cruel of our father to ask me. Oh, Amabel! Amabel! what shall I do?"

"You must marry him, poor Elizabeth," replied Amabel ruefully. "You know how terribly angry father was when you said that before. We are so poor and Inverell is so rich, and he will help us somehow, and-perhaps you will like him better when you see him oftener."

Elizabeth shook her head.

"He is so old," she sobbed. "He has such a red nose; he drinks such bottles of wine."

Amabel sighed. "I don't think he drinks more than other gentlemen," she said soothingly. "And he isn't so very old, Elizabeth-not more than fifty, I should think."

But Elizabeth would not be comforted. She was not very strongminded, and when her father, Sir Ronald, had informed her of Invereil's offer, and told her that the gentleman would arrive on this particular day for her answer, it required only a little firmness and some strong language on his part to reduce her to tears and submission.

"What silly foolery is this?" he had exclaimed roughly. "What reasonable objection can you have to Invereil? He is a fine, personable gentleman of birth and means, and I expect you to receive him favorably, Elizabeth, when he comes to pay suit to you."

Elizabeth had wept.

"Not like him!" Sir Ronald's indignation had increased. "I like him, and I am a better judge of men than you can be; and I may tell you, Elizabeth, that beggars can't be choosers, and

beggars we are these days-and Inverell speaks very handsomely-uncommon handsomely indeed,-tutstuts-away with you, and no nonsense. You may thank your stars, my girl, for the good fortune that will make you Invereil's lady."

So Elizabeth had submitted to her fate, as did many a good little maiden in those days, and had watered her pillow with tears ever since; and Sir Ronald had drunk deep potations of satisfaction over the prospect of a wealthy and open-handed son-in-law.

"Amabel," said Elizabeth, as the approaching riders disappeared in a fold of the road, "if Aunt Rachel had been here she might” Her voice broke.

"Yes," admitted Amabel doubtfully. "If she had been here she might-she doesn't like him-but I don't know."

Aunt Rachel was Sir Ronald's maiden aunt who until recent times had made her home at Lyne, and who had looked after her nephew's house and her nephew's daughters. Inverell had offended her on one occasion, and she had never forgiven him. There was no doubt she would have little favor for the match. Poor Elizabeth began to wish for the presence of the grim old lady whose caustic tongue had made life bitter to herself and Amabel on many a bygone day. At least, Aunt Rachel was afraid of no one.

In

"Never mind, Elizabeth," said Amabel, bent on comforting her disconsolate sister in face of the inevitable. "Never mind. Whatever happens you will cross the Diridh Mor. verei is a lovely place, they say, and you will have everything you want, and be rich, and go to London and see the world-and oh, Elizabeth!" she added, clasping her little hands, "you will take me with you, won't you?"

"I don't want to be rich," sobbed

Elizabeth passionately. "I don't want. to go to London. Oh, why couldn't