the inefficiency of her departmental services and their inability to solve the enormous difficulties of transportation in the event of a war with Japan. . . . To Russia the absorption of Korea is simply the next and most obvious step in her imperial march, the necessary connecting link between Port Arthur and Vladivostok. To Japan it is the forerunner of her own extinction."

The Bangkok Times declares that the cleverest diplomatic move in the entire Chinese muddle was the "calm intimation" from Tokyo that, if China signed the Manchurian treaty with Russia, Japan would require an equivalent. The Times believes that Russia is really afraid to become involved with Japan. It quotes, in this connection, the remark of Admiral Alexieff, the Russian naval commander in the East: "France is our bank; America is governed by women; Germany is too slow; and England is finished." And what about Japan, asked the listener. "I wish you would not speak of Japan."

The new journal, Japan and America, published in both English and Japanese in this city, publishes a long analysis of Japan's position in the Far East, in which it says:

"The position now occupied by Japan is not the result of happy fortune, nor was it attained without great labors and infinite patience. The little empire has had to fight hard and suffer much for everything that helps to make it the most advanced and enlightened country of the East and one of the greatest nations of the world. It passed through civil strifes far more terrible than those that deluged England and France with blood. It welded together with blood and iron the fragments of provinces and principalities that had striven for the headship and mastery, and shaped itself, alone among nations, without foreign aid, into an harmonious country, in which all local jealousies were merged into a passionate patriotism. Enemies from without sought its conquest, but the fleets and hopes of Mongol and Tatar were wrecked upon its free shores. To-day it stands as the only great country in history that has not been conquered or defeated."

The success of Japan in the recent war with China, says the writer, was in the highest interests of civilization, and now her necessity and privilege point to a position on the Asiatic continent. The Czar does not need Korea, but Japan must have it, In reply to recent articles in several Russian papers (the Novosti and Novoye Vremya, of St. Petersburg) advocating an alliance between Russia and Japan, this journal says:

It is

"The Japanese are learning Russian. They will need Russian very much for trading purposes in the near future. In fact they are making use of it now in the ports of Eastern Asia. But they want Russian at this time for a far different purpose. wise to know the language of your enemy, no less than the language of your friend. Unfortunately, there is not much prospect of close friendship between Japan and Russia for years to come-not, at least, until Japan has fulfilled her own destiny, and expanded her empire upon the opposite coast of Asia."

The Chronicle (Kobe) censures the Japanese Government for not taking proper advantage of the empire's position in the world of trade. The completion of the trans-Siberian railroad, says this journal, together with the development of the railroad system of America, and the linking of the railways with steamship traffic on the Pacific which is now in progress, will bring the Far West and the Far East into a connection the results of which are only beginning to be realized.

"Here Japan will have her opportunity. Japan lies on the high road between the Far West and the Far East, and might well form a distributing or storage center if the financial department is quick to seize the possibilities of the situation. Unfortunately there seems no evidence of this at present, for the customs procedure with regard to drawbacks offers no encouragement to the landing of dutiable goods in Japan for market purposes, and it does not seem to be recognized that Japan might be a center of reexport to Siberia, or China, or anywhere else as the opportunity served. . . . There can be little doubt that if Japan, when she recovered her tariff autonomy, had proceeded to abandon many of the existing duties and to reduce others, instead of

increasing the tariff all round, the result would have been very greatly to her advantage. The country in such case would more and more have tended to become a great emporium for trade-a center of distribution for both South and North China that would have given an immense impetus to her manufacturing industry as well as her general commerce."

Baron Hayashi, the Japanese minister to England, makes the following statement of his country's policy toward China:

"Japan feels that she knows China's needs well as she certainly knows her own. She believes that Chinese unity should be preserved, and that the Manchu system of government, if continued, should be improved by such radical, but discreet, reformation as would, unlike those many hurried attempts which have in past time done more harm than good, bring China into touch with modern life and with the world."

Commenting on this statement, the Kobe Herald says:

"Japan alone, with China, has a present and a pressing interest in the achievement of some workable basis of settlement, pacification, and reorganization. The failure of the Japanese Government to follow this up as their primary aim, and to make it known among the Powers as their first desire, is not reassuring to the country at large, laboring, as it is, in a sea of financial difficulties scarcely less easy than the sea of political difficulties upon which China is tossing. The apparent indifference of the Japanese Government to the prolongation of an impossible state of affairs in China goes some way to support the charge that is sometimes urged against it—the charge that it is influenced by the military order to an extent that is not credite and certainly far from desirable, in a country whose first interests and first cares must be industrial and commercial, if they are anything at all. Japan has had enough bugle music to last her for some time to come. What she wants to hear now is the music of factory looms and machinery pulleys. The only war noises that should interrupt these are such as may attend the fair defense of her incontestable rights in Korea. These, when it is necessary to make them, all impartial critics will be willing to bless and to rejoice in. But further dilatory and vainglorious display in China can only be reckoned akin to the criminal and contemptible display of the gilded bankrupt."

ARE THERE STILL SPANISH PRISONERS THE PHILIPPINES?

SOME

IN

OME concern is felt in Spain at the unknown fate of many thousand former Spanish officers, soldiers, and marines. who, it is alleged, are either prisoners of the Filipino insurgents, or scattered throughout the Philippine Islands. The Época (Madrid), while not placing too much credence in this report, considers that the subject deserves attention, and quotes a contemporary as follows:

"More than seven thousand families in Spain are ignorant of the fate of their relatives, children, and wives, who three years ago were held captives by the Tagalos in the Philippines. Many must have died, but some are still living, or, at least, it is stated that they were living a year ago, if we may believe the latest and most recent advices received by the families interésted. The ladies of the Central Junta, or committee, lately requested of the Prime Minister, Señor Sagasta, an audience, but he declined receiving them on the pretext that his many official duties prevented they obtained a similar answer from the president of the Congress [House of Representatives]. Later, they again appealed to Señor Sagasta, beseeching him to attend to their urgent supplications, but he has not yet deigned to acknowledge their petition. Of the 11,000 Spanish captives of the Tagalos, only 4,000 soldiers, women and children, have returned to Spain, namely, those liberated by the Yankees, and the remaining seven thousand are still in the Philippines, while their families are frantic, and powerless to know the fate of those unfortunates. If the Ministry of War in Madrid will pay no attention to the matter, the unhappy families are meditating, through a previous arrangement with the Filipinos, to send over two commissioners, chosen from the relatives of the captives, who shall endeavor to assemble the living, and gather all possible data concerning the dead, taking pains especially to go over the

UNCLE SAM: "These . . . . Philippine beggars. I thought I had them well under foot." JOHN BULL: "Ha! ha! That's just what I thought when I first sent my boys to South Africa. Now look at me." -Amsterdammer.

few now remain in the power of the insurgents, the latter having pretty nearly all surrendered to the Americans. It is not possible that there are seven thousand prisoners, but, nevertheless, it behooves the Spanish Government, through its consul in Manila, to do whatever is possible to throw light on the question of the prisoners, by taking a census of those who fell in the power of the insurgents, as well as of those who were freed, and also ascertaining who have died and who remain in the power of the Tagalos."

CANADA'S

THE

PROGRESS AND HER FOREIGN

RELATIONS.

HE press of the Dominion is devoting a good deal of attention to the discussion of Canada's industrial and commercial possibilities and how these are affected by her foreign relations. A recently issued volume entitled "The Progress of Canada in the Nineteenth Century," by J. C. Hopkins, of Brantford, Ontario, closes with the following:

"In 1800 Canada appeared as a tiny population of pioneers scattered along the northern frontiers of a hostile nation; environed by the shadow of gloomy forests and the sound of savage life; with the loneliness of a vast wilderness away to the farthest north and west. The past was painful, the present was only relieved by a patriotic fire in the hearts of the Loyalists and by the cheerful hopefulness characteristic of their race in the breasts of the French, while the future was veiled behind dense clouds of evident personal privation and the utter absence of common popular action. In 1900 it stands as a united people of between five and six millions, with a foundation, well and truly laid, of great transportation enterprises, of a common fiscal policy and a

common Canadian sentiment. It boasts of greatly expanded trade and commerce, a growing industrial production, increasing national and provincial revenues, a wider and a better knowledge of its own vast resources, a steady promotion of settlement, and the continuous opening-up of new regions in its seemingly boundless territories. Above all, it has reached out beyond the shores of the Dominion into a practical partnership with other countries of the British empire, and is sharing in a greatness and power which the wildest dream of the United Empire Loyalist in his log hut in the forest of a century since could never have pictured. To meet this apparent destiny, however, qualities must be cultivated such as those possessed by the settlers in pioneer days, and the narrowness of a superficial and vainglorious democracy as carefully avoided as the subservient faults of selfish despotism. If the people of Canada cultivate a strength of mind which eliminates boasting, a loyalty which avoids spreadeagleism, an educational system which reaches the heart as well as the intellect, and trains the manners as well as the morals, a religious feeling which avoids bigotry and detests intolerance, a national sentiment which is not racial or provincial, but Canadian, an imperial patriotism which widens the public horizon and strengthens the character of the people while it elevates the politics of the country, that future seems to the finite vision to be reasonably assured."

In commenting on this work, most of the Canadian journals point out that the Dominion is not quite yet awake to its great future. American enterprise and capital, these journals complain, are having an undue share of the good things which na ture has bestowed upon Canada. In the matter of railroads, says The Telegram (Toronto), the Dominion seems to be playing a losing game. Our great lines seem to be surely on the way to absorption by the American syndicates. Events (Ottawa) refers in the same vein to the working of Canadian copper mines by American enterprise. Let our own people, it says, get every cent that is to be made out of the natural resources of Canada, and the "reproach will no longer be ours that we are greater in undeveloped resources than in available wealth. So long as we allow strangers to carry away our wealth we will remain poor." The World (Toronto) refers approvingly to a recent article in The Engineering Magazine, of New York, in which the statement was made that the United States and Canada are twenty years in advance of other nations in the art of bridge design and construction. The World says further: "The steel of which a bridge is made represents about half of its cost. Steel is now made in the United States at much less cost than in any other country. In Britain, labor is so much hampered by trade-unionism that it is admitted by one of the leaders that the cost of labor in making steel in the United States is not one-half of what it is in Britain. The same conditions apply to Canada as well. If Canada is not yet in a position to compete with the United States in foreign markets, it should at least be quite competent to take care of all the bridge work within the limits of the Dominion. Not a dollar's worth of bridge material should be allowed to enter the country."

This journal also calls for increased enterprise in the iron trade, and The Herald (Montreal) comments jubilantly on the first shipment of Canadian pig-iron to Great Britain as a "great occasion for patriotic rejoicing." The Monetary Times (Toronto) strongly advocates government assistance to establish shipbuilding on the Canadian Pacific coast, but The Witness (Montreal) sees in the protective policy of the United States the cause of the "disappearance from the ocean of the American merchant marine," and says:

"The United States has money to throw away by millions, as it proves by the fraudulent pension system which it maintains. Canada would do better to husband her equally rich natural resources, develop them more economically, and spend them to better advantage. If she can build steel ships at a profit, which, assuming adequate capital, we see no reason why she should not, let her do so; but let us be done with robbing poor Peter to pay rich Paul."

Canadian papers are still touchy on the subject of annexation

to the United States. If the Monroe Doctrine means that the United States will defend the South American countries from

European aggression, says The Globe (Toronto), that is a sound and intelligent policy. On the other hand, the contingency of an attack by any European Power on Canada is not one that causes any deep anxiety:

"To speak with perfect frankness, the only disturbing element on this continent is doubt as to the position and intentions of the United States. If there were perfect assurance on that point, great progress might be made in the beating of swords into plowshares. At least the only danger would be a possible invasion of some South American country by a European Power, and it would greatly simplify American policy if all its plans for defense were concentrated upon that point."

The

No inducement will secure Canada for the American Union, declares the Patrie (Montreal), the chief organ of French thought in the Dominion. "We are neither to be sold or rented." Montreal correspondent of the Hamburg Correspondent, however, believes that Great Britain's hold on the Dominion is very slight. A large proportion of Canadians, this writer declares, would be quite willing to come over to the United States. He says:

"On the day when hostilities break out between England and the United States Canada will be lost to the empire forever, and it is quite certain that a very large proportion of the Canadians would welcome the change. There certainly has been much talk of colonial enthusiasm for the empire since the South African war began. A portion of the Canadian press has made this its specialty and English journals have quoted the loyal utterances with much gusto. But it is all humbug, and the majority of Canadians will have none of it. Economic advantages is what they desire, and many are convinced that they would be much better off as a part of the United States."

The Saturday Review (London), however, pooh-poohs the idea of any considerable annexation sentiment in Canada. It says: "It would be an insult to Canadian intelligence and to the memory of the Empire Loyalists to imagine that the republic will either coerce or cajole the Canadians to surrender their birthright. Canada would lose much and gain little by absorption in the United States. That is better understood in Ottawa

SHOULD THE JAPANESE BE EXCLUDED?

N

view of the early expiration (May 5, 1902) of the Chinese exclusion law, a writer in the Nouvelle Revue (Paris) declares that Americans should be especially careful how they include Japanese in any exclusion law of the future. Referring to the large increase in Japanese immigration and the sentiment in California for the barring out of all Asiatic peoples, this writer (M. Marcel Dumorel) says:

"It should not be forgotten-and Japan does not forget-that the Mikado's empire owes to America its emergence from the lethargy in which ignorance of the outside world held it for centuries. The first treaty opening its ports to foreigners was made with the United States. Since that date extraordinary efforts. have been made to reach the level of the civilized nations. While this hurried national education was progressing, the great American empire was regarded by little Japan as an elder brother. America furnished nearly all the school-teachers of Japan, and many young Japanese every year perfected their education at American colleges, where they were received with a welcome which drew still closer the bonds which united the two nations."

The people of Japan, continues this writer, have learned with surprise and pain of the sentiment in favor of excluding them from the United States simply on account of their color. If the proposed law were confined to the exclusion of Japanese laborers, doubtless the Government of that nation would acquiesce in its reasonableness, as the men at the head of affairs are "too well versed in political and social economy not to understand the objections raised to the competition of white labor with that of dif-ferently conditioned races."

"But a law which should commit the wrong of excluding Japanese of every condition from American soil on the simple ground that they are Japanese, would wound them hardly less sensibly than a declaration of war. The Japanese have never been other than Japanese and of the yellow race. Their ethnical relations are the same as twenty years ago. No plausible reason makes. it clear to them why Americans should deny its friends of yesterday on the simple ground that they have not ceased to be of the yellow race. It would be an error of diplomacy to wound their national pride by a proscription of their race."-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

What Became of the Inhabitants of Pompeii ?Max Nordau raises an interesting question concerning Pompeii.. He writes as follows to the Neue Freie Presse (Vienna) :

"One thing has always been a puzzle to me. Here was a flour-ishing city of about 30,000 inhabitants, most of whom evidentlywere well-to-do. A few hundreds, at most, lost their lives in the destruction of the city; the rest escaped. The eruption of Vesu-vius continued only a few days, after which the district returned. to its usual placid condition. In many places the deposit of ashes. and lava was only a yard thick, and it was not more than three: yards thick at any point yet excavated.

"How did it happen that these 30,000 homeless persons showed. no desire to return to their beautiful houses, so well built that they are standing to this day, and which could have been re-stored, at the time, with very little labor? Why did they not make the slightest attempt to regain their valuable property in land and buildings, furniture, bronze, marble, gold, silver, and jewels? Did the men of that time have so little love of homethat they could leave it without a backward glance at the first unpleasantness? Were the Pompeiians so rich that the loss of their perfectly appointed homes appeared trivial to them, so that they preferred settling elsewhere to restoring their city? Or did superstition prevent the attempt?

"This indifferent renunciation of their patrimony by a whole cityful is to me an insoluble enigma which forces itself the more strongly upon my attention now as I walk along the finely paved streets between houses which need only new roofs to make them again habitable."-Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

"Christology."-Oliver C. Sabine. (News-Letter Press, $2.00.)

"A Drone and a Dreamer." Nelson Lloyd. (J. F. Taylor & Co., $1.50.)

"Daniel. Darius the Median, and Cyrus the Great."-Rev. Joseph Horner. (Eaton & Mains, $1.20.)

"Told by Two."-Marie St Felix. (M. A. Donohue & Co.)

"Tennessee Sketches."-Louisa P. Looney. (A. C. McClurg & Co., $1.00.)

"Juell Demming."-Albert L. Lawrence. (A. C. McClurg & Co., $1.25.)

"Justice to the Woman."- Bernie Babcock. (A. C McClurg & Co., $1.25.)

"A Texan in Search of a Fight."-John C. West. (J. S Hill & Co, $0.50.)

"I Suggest Suggestion and Osteopathy."-W. I. Gordon, M D., D O. (The Progressive Osteopathic and Suggestive Therapeutic Publishing Co.)

"When a Witch is Young."-4-19-64. (R. F. Fenno & Co., $1.50.)

"L19,000."-Burford Delannoy. (R. F. Fenno & Co, $1.25.)

"A Crystal Sceptre."-Philip Verrill Mighels. (R. F. Fenno & Co., $1 50.)

CURRENT POETRY.

IN MEMORIAM.

Our President.

By ARTHUR GUITERMAN.

Hush Hush! he sleeps. Let bitterness have end. With voiceless grief that speaks in clasping hand And heart-born look, that true hearts under

stand,

In silence mourn our Hero and our Friend.

Our Well-belov'd, who loved the most of all-
Our Man of cleanly life and gentle deed,
Whose every day was full of kindly heed
For those he dealt with, were they great or
small-

Who learned from all, who held our weal in thought

And grew in strength and wisdom as he wrought-
Whose heart had naught of malice nor of pride-
Who lived as Lincoln lived-hath died as Lincoln
died.

Cease! Cease awhile, ye myriad leaping fires
And busy wheels in every clanging mill
That lifts in sad appeal its grimy spires!
A heart that gloried in you now is still.

And, star-bright flag that thrills above the waves
And glads our arching sky from shore to shore,
Droop! Sadly droop along the shadowed staves -
For One who gave you glory is no more.

The great guns boom in tones of sullen grief,
The murmuring streets are hung in heavy pall.
A silent Nation mourns a noble Chief;

His People mourn for him who loved them all.
-New York Times.

"Death Has Crowned Him as a Martyr." By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

In the midst of sunny waters, lo! the mighty Ship of State

Staggers, bruised and torn and wounded by a

derelict of fate,

One that drifted from its moorings, in the anchor

age of hate.

Unguarded Gates.

By THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

[This poem, published in the Atlantic Monthly, April, 1892, has been quoted by the press as being apropos of the national sorrow.]

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds -North, South, East and
West;

Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,
Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past

year

The Arab's date palm and the Norseman's pine-
A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,
Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the
The red rose blossoms somewhere a rich land,
A later Eden planted in the wilds,
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free!
Here it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stands level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed,
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them press a wild, a motley throng-
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and
rites,

Those tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace alien to our air,

Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, White Goddess! is it well
To leave the gate unguarded? On thy breast

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