a point. Dean Inge is the only one who accepts it both as an experience and as a philosophic faith. Mr. Russell stands on the brink, awake to the spell, allured there in heart and spirit, and feeling some reflected beauty from it, even in his thought. But, like Mr. Santayana, he will not take it as a creed. Mr. Santayana has said very hard things of mysticism, which he calls, not a religion, but a religious disease. For him it is a blank surge of feeling, so that, as he says maliciously, the art of dealing with

it is to be mystical in spots. Yet the presence of this element in Spinoza has not prevented him from feeling the power of that great man's spirit. Borrowing some words of his for a context that was not intended, we might fancy him saying of Dean Inge's mysticism that it is 'moderately indulged and duly inhibited by a residuum of conventional sanity,' and of Mr. Russell's attitude that it is only an exaggeration of a rational interest in the highest abstractions.'

'ASIA is a unit,' said the Japanese statesman and scholar, Okakura, in 1903. Asia is a unit, notwithstanding the absence of a precise boundary between it and the adjoining continents, notwithstanding the contrasts which distinguish its great civilizations in China, India, and Arabia, and notwithstanding the fact that it has no common standard-bearer. But how much more truly is America a unit, with its well-defined continental boundaries, its weaker internal contrasts, and the uncontested leadership of the United States. Is not the United States, as Decker said, the natural centre of a political solar system where planets and satellites revolve around their own sun? America is one, and the United States is its prophet.

Provisionally, this unity is not political, and it may be a long time before it becomes so. On closer observation we discover that America's political development has tended toward subdivision into minor states; and that this subdivision has assumed a dualist aspect. Dualism, so familiar and so fatal in the old Hapsburg monarchy, is a constantly recurring leitmotiv in the New World.

It might be said that dualism was imposed upon the Western Hemisphere by the map. Are there not, in fact, two continents, North and South America? Is not the narrow and geologically recent Isthmus of Panama a natural boundary? History answers, no. The two continents have never been separate and independent units. Panama

has always formed a bond, not a boundary, and has become more of a bond than ever, now that it is cut by a canal. Instead of that, a great historical contrast unites South America, with Central America beyond the Isthmus, in opposition to the remainder of the Northern continent. The dividing line was drawn by history, not by geology. Latin races originally occupied the South, Anglo-Saxons the North. Thus there was gradually formed a culturefrontier of primary importance, coinciding with the boundary between Mexico and the United States. South of this flows the Latin blood, strongly intermingled with that of the native races. This latter fact constitutes a new point of difference, affecting not only race, but also civilization; for the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of the northern portion of the hemisphere have preserved intact their purity of race.

We discover that this difference is primarily a politico-racial difference. For a long period it involved also a difference in the form of government between government from above and government from below; but this contrast began to disappear about a hundred years back, and when Brazil became a republic, in 1889, it entirely ceased to exist.

Besides the division represented by the southern boundary of the United States, there is a second division between independent nations and the survivals of European colonies. However, that division is neither so deep nor so well defined as the former. Independent America still resents the European holdings in the Caribbean region. These alone give political significance to the broad ocean salient between the two halves of the Western continent. But the United States is laboring deliberately to dislodge Europe from these outposts. Having acquired Cuba and Porto Rico in 1898, and the

Danish Islands in 1917, it is probably only a question of time until all other remnants of transoceanic sovereignty will have entirely disappeared.

The next point to attract our attention is that the plans of the United States in this region are not limited to European colonies. Independent governments in the West Indies and Central America are dropping one after another into that country's capacious pockets. Panama disappeared in 1903, Santo Domingo in 1905, Nicaragua in 1910, and Haiti in 1915. We still recall America's intervention in Mexican affairs in 1911, when it pushed south of the great kultur-boundary of the Rio Grande. The powerful current of political influence is obviously flowing southward from the United States across this cultural water-shed.

What is to be the ultimate outcome? Nothing else than the unity of the hemisphere. The very year that monarchy disappeared from the Western world - 1889 —this movement started with the first international American conference. Its programme is PanAmerican, and its ideal is inscribed over the three bronze portals of the Carnegie Pan-American palace in Washington: 'Peace, friendship, and trade.'

English Canada is not yet included in this plan. But Anglo-Saxon solidarity was tried and tested in the World War, so as to make it seem but a question of time when even that political boundary will vanish. Brotherhood of arms makes the common Anglo-Saxon pressure southward into Latin America only more powerful. To be sure, the Versailles Treaty has introduced a new element of political difference, since the United States and Mexico remain outside the League of Nations, while the other governments of America have joined the League. But it would be folly to suppose that this difference will be permanent or significant. It will take

In search of such a possible disturbing influence, let us now explore the strictly geo-political factors in the present expansion policy of the United States. It is at present the most obvious of all such influences. We shall discover that this is the force which is constantly shoving southward the dividing line between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon race; but that simultaneously every advance is creating a new dividing line in the Western hemisphere.

The ultimate reason for the present expansion of the United States - the only one which can appear important to such a gigantic country — is in the Janus type of its dominions. It possesses an Atlantic and a Pacific coast, which have no direct connection with each other. In order to overcome this constitutional weakness from the strategic and military point of view, the government built the Panama Canal. It thus made itself a new political stronghold, but also a new and sensitive point of attack to be protected. This first step inevitably leads to others. Three fanlike areas of interest radiate from the Panama Canal: first, the intervening continental territory of Mexico and Central America; second, the West Indies, with their exposed points of attacks from the eastward; finally, the neighboring territories to the southward, from whence the canal might be attacked, particularly Colombia and Venezuela.

This is as far as the logic of geography defines political boundaries. Is there any factor which gives unity to the three? The map itself replies: the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, or in a word, the American Mediterranean. Immediately there rises before our eyes a familiar picture in the history of geo-politics. It starts with the masteryof the Mediterranean by ancient Rome, of the Baltic by Sweden, of the Adriatic

gigantic Indian Ocean power - a 'circum-marine' empire whose unequal fractions are fused into one by the ocean they surround. The United States is laboring, like ancient Rome, to complete its Mediterranean dominion.

This aspect of modern American expansion is contained within the broader geographical purpose of the Monroe Doctrine, which embraces all America. For a long time, it was overshadowed by this greater and world-recognized programme, though it did not entirely escape attention. In March, 1914, Calderon noted in the Atlantic Monthly, that the territories between the northern boundary of Mexico and Panama, together with the West Indies, Colombia, and Venezuela would constitute henceforth a 'zone of influence' of the United States. In the July number of the Annals of the American Political Academy of the same year, Admiral Chester characterized the same region as 'the greater Panama Canal zone'; and in a book entitled, The Caribbean Interests of the United States, published in 1916, an author named Jones conceives this region as a commercial unit in its relations to the United States. This region embraces five and a half million square kilometres of area and forty million people; it is about the same extent as European Russia before the war, and has a population equal to that of France.

What at once strikes the eye as unnatural in this geographical analysis is the separation of Colombia and Venezuela from the Southern continent, and their association with their Northern neighbor. Here two factors in geo-politics, South America and the Caribbean Sea, appear to come in conflict. Three great political influences, in addition to the selfish interests of the United States, favor the Caribbean idea.

The first is the old historical tradi

tion which has come down to us from the days of Spain's colonial empire. Until the close of the eighteenth century Venezuela and Colombia were united under a viceroy, as New Granada. This was an independent province separated from the viceroyalty of Peru. Even after it secured its independence, New Granada - including Ecuador remained a single government until nearly 1830.

The second is strictly geographical. There is a secondary boundary within the primary ocean boundary of the Southern continent. This line follows the northern water-shed of the Amazon Valley. It is a particularly important boundary for Venezuela and Guiana

a colonial region which also lies in the Caribbean zone; and on its eastern extremity, it is strengthened by the flora-frontier between the prairies of the lower Orinoco and the virgin forest to the southward. The United States can base its political control over the Northern coast of South America on precisely the same motives and arguments which induced ancient Rome to become master of North Africa. The only difference is that Rome's African colonies were bounded on the South by a great desert, while the Caribbean coastal regions of South America are bounded by a virgin forest.

The third ally of the sea in this struggle with the continent is strictly political: the natural community of interest and the tendency to form alliances among the governments south of the Caribbean area. Here we encounter in reality two great processes, delimited by the same natural frontier, which, instead of conflicting with each other, reinforce each other. In the southern part of the continent the A B C formula is winning ground; it represents a drift toward a federation of the three principal South American powers: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. This first mani

fested itself in the arbitration treaty concluded at the beginning of the century; it was strengthened by the fraternal celebrations of 1910 to commemorate their liberation from Spain; it became a factor of further political importance when these powers mediated between the United States and Mexico in 1914; and it was still further solidified in international law by a kind. of entente in 1915. We discover here a definite essay toward a United States of South America, with its nucleus in the South Temperate Zone, just as the United States of North America has its nucleus in the North Temperate Zone. These are two centres of attraction whose influence gradually grows weaker toward the Equator. However, the equatorial zone coincides with the Amazon Valley, whose overland outlets are practically all to the southward. Consequently, the natural boundary of this group of governments in that direction is the northern water-shed of this valley.

Therefore, many important geographical considerations argue in favor of a political dividing line in the New World, following the Orinoco-Amazon water-shed instead of the present language frontier along the Rio Grande, or the prominent map frontier across Panama. We assume as a matter of course that the two buffer states on the Plate River - Paraguay and Uruguay-will affiliate themselves with their larger neighbors. On the other hand, Ecuador, the old partner in New Granada, will join the other camp, particularly since the United States already has its eye on the Galapagos Islands as bases for the defense of the Panama Canal. Perhaps the zone of interest created by the Canal on the Pacific Coast will reach down to Peru, so that Bolivia's position in the system will remain uncertain. The idea of a greater Colombia, to include also Bo

livia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela, has been mentioned; but merely in a speculative way. If we include Bolivia with the southern system, where it naturally belongs, the latter will form a political area 15,000,000 square kilometres in extent, with an ultimate population of 50,000,000. It will be a worthy pendant of the North American power, and will be scarcely inferior to the latter in economic resources, embracing as it will the products of both the tropic and the temperate zone. But its population will be scarcely a third that of its northern neighbor; and in total power and resources it will be greatly the inferior of the latter. Furthermore, the A B C must contend with a divided leadership, while the United States of America will continue to possess undisputed supremacy within its zone of control.

This concludes our little analysis. Its object is to point out a subdivision in the unity of the two Americas more important than the geographical division between the Northern and the Southern continents, or the linguistic

and racial division between the AngloSaxons and the Latins. It points to a development likely to supersede the premises of Monroe and to retard the realization of a Pan-America. It suggests also a development likely to absorb the future energy of the United States in its own hemisphere and to handicap its efforts to Americanize the world.

Naturally, this geo-political analysis does not presume to be a political prophecy. If America's efforts at expansion are now focused on the South, it will be the first case in history where this has occurred. All previous experience indicates that this Power, the greatest in the world since the conclusion of the war, will tend to extend along its own parallels of latitude — toward Asia and Europe. Quite possibly that will be the shortest route to a mastery of South America; for Europe and Japan are the last flank defenses of the Southern continent. In last analysis, the vigor and power of the other continents will be the principal obstacles to the unity of America.

It would be unjust, not to recognize that there is another side to Mr. Wells's theology. His God, he tells us, is of the nature of will, as will is of the nature of thought. That seems to imply a certain initiative on the part of the deity, a further personality than the abstract idea which is all that Positivism has ever worshiped. 'God is a person who

can be known as one knows a friend

he is helped and gladdened by us. He hopes and attempts. . . . God is no abstraction or trick of words, no Infinite. He is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace. . . .

Elsewhere he speaks of God as 'spontaneous,' and says 'He himself remains freedom, and we find our free