under the fierce light of international politics, it has been this Republic of ours. To be sure, our trade policy of recent years has been framed on the Chinese model—"America for the Americans"—and in consequence we are now brought face to face with a retaliatory policy on the part of the powers of continental Europe which may easily shut us out of the world's market at the hour of our greatest need. But of that, more later on.

In point of fact, we have been a "world power" from the very moment of our birth as a nation, or even before it. Our Declaration of Independence, that beautiful synthesis of paradoxes, became from the moment of its publication a powerful factor in the world's progress. "Among all peoples," says Professor Tyler, "it has everywhere been associated with the assertion of the natural rights of man. To every struggling nation it has been a model and an inspiration." And Buckle, the English historian, declares that its effect in hastening the French Revolution "was most remarkable." No state paper of modern times has exercised so wide an authority.

Geographically, we are a nation lying athwart a continent, from ocean to ocean, and in the immediate highway of the world's traffic from west to east and from east to west. Between 1821 and 1898 no less than eighteen millions of Europeans landed upon our shores to become a part of our citizenship and complete its truly cosmopolitan character.

As for the policy of our Government, it has been that of a world power from the start. Almost our first important act as a government was to cast in our lot with France, for the express purpose of disturbing the balance of power in Europe. And that purpose was realized. In December, 1776, Congress sent out a fleet of privateers which became a scourge to our enemies on the high seas. As early as 1777, we had commissioners, who soon became ministers, at Paris, taking active and important part in a conference of the powers. Five years later, Franklin, John Adams and Jay sat in the congress at Paris, "almost as arbiters," a contemporary record says, so powerful was their voice in the conference.

Washington's much-talked-of proclamation of neutrality, says Professor Bushnell Hart, was never intended to keep the United States from contact or entanglement with European powers, but only so wisely to shape our course (at that time) that we should be free to fight or keep the peace as our interest should dictate.

It was the United States which first ventured to send a fleet to the Mediterranean to suppress the Barbary pirates—an act from which all the civilized world benefited. Indeed, it is within the limits of truth to say that the period of our liveliest intercourse with foreign powers was the identical period of "the fathers" who are so often and so falsely quoted as urging the policy of isolation that would sooner or later reduce us to the condition of the Chinese Empire.

Our interests in the far East began as early as 1785, when the ship Empress of New York came home from her first Chinese voyage to enrich her owners with the traffic in furs and ginseng. It is a fact too soon forgotten that our title to Oregon was founded upon the early establishment on that remote coast of a trading-post for our Chinese trade.

As long ago as 1851, the native rulers of Hawaii begged—nay, even insisted—that our government annex those islands, whose people had already been familiar with our flag for years. Annexation did not take place until nearly half a century later, but the episode suffices to prove that even at that early day we were a world power in all that the term implies.

Three years later—in 1854—Oliver Hazard Perry, Commodore of the United States navy, battered down the gates of Nagasaki, and by the method which England so successfully employed toward China, established "treaty relations" between the Yankees of the East and of the West.

This brings us, after a view necessarily imperfect and cursory, very nearly to the War of the Rebellion. That struggle, and the absorbing internal questions which led up to it, kept us very busy at home, though both the North and the South, appreciating the importance of foreign sympathy and moral support, kept their emissaries constantly at the various courts of Europe. The international episodes of the war may be said in one sense to afford the most interesting chapters in its history. Certainly they should suffice to convince us that, even in the heat of that internal struggle, our affairs formed a part of the business of the outside world; so complete is the interdependence of nations. Nor need it be recalled that the war was scarcely at an end before Mr. Seward had occasion to warn Napoleon III. out of Mexico, and thus topple over a scheme of aggression involving at least two of the great powers of Europe.

It has been necessary to pass over with greater haste than I could have wished these arguments of the anti-expansionists, because there are other phases of the question which, to my mind at least, are of vastly greater importance; for I do not deny that there are obstacles in the path of territorial expansion.

Assuming the present war of subjugation to be brought to a successful issue; that the Filipinos acknowledge both the hopelessness of their cause and the justice of ours, as in the end they must, our difficulties are not yet finished. We have still to consider the remoteness of the archipelago, the savagery of many of the native tribes, the tropical climate, and the dregs of four centuries of Spanish misrule.

The average temperature in the Philippines, according to the imperfect statistics collated by the Spanish at Manila, is much too high for the comfort of any man accustomed to the climate of our so-called temperate zone. Professor Dean Worcester, of our Philippine Commission, who spent three and a half years in the islands as a naturalist, says that in all that time he never experienced a day in which a white man could work hard for many hours together in comfort, or even in safety. The coolest months are December and January, but the lowest temperature known at this period of mid-winter is 71 degrees. During the remainder of the year the mercury often mounts above 90 degrees, and not infrequently to 100 degrees. The effects of the heat, moreover, are aggravated by the humidity of the atmosphere, so that it saps the vitality and enfeebles the stoutest constitution.

These conditions are arduous, but by no means intolerable. White men do live in the islands and steadily work without impairing their health. The absence of sudden changes enables one to dress for the climate without fear of catching cold. Herein the climate is preferable to that of some of our larger cities, such as New York or St. Louis, where intense heat with humidity alternate with sudden chills.

Malarial fever is one of the curses of the Philippines; but this disease is found in all countries imperfectly tilled and drained, and there, as elsewhere, it disappears in the face of cleanliness and intelligent sanitation. Some cities and districts which at one time were almost wholly uninhabitable have been freed entirely of malaria by thorough drainage. The Spanish, with characteristic indolence, have as a rule endured the ravages of the disease rather than incur the cost and labor of preventive measures. Weyler—the dreadful, blood-drinking Weyler—who was for a time Captain-General of the Philippines, at one time lost the greater part of his army from a fever which might have been averted with proper care. Cholera is not epidemic