the similar society in England, the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. Few, probably, without thinking the matter over, would appreciate how much greater is the need of such a society in America, both because the loss of our fewer links with the past means all the more on account of their rarity, and because the shifting, changing character of our population makes for the destruction of continuity of association. We try, when abroad, to realize vividly on some historic spot the suggested story, and feel the charm of a direct contact. We forget that at home we pass by like opportunities unimpressed because we are not accustomed to expect them. The story of the Morris Mansion, for example, the "thread of romantic history" connecting it with the Philipse Manor Hall in Yonkers, has doubtless been lost even upon most of those who have visited it. Yet how interesting it is, as told in a sentence in the report. Roger Morris, who built the mansion before the war of the Revolution, "was a comrade-in-arms of George Washington at Braddock's defeat in 1755, and his rival for the heart of Mary Philipse, heiress of the lord of Philipse Manor. Morris beat Washington in the game of hearts, but within twenty years Washington made his headquarters in the Morris Mansion, from which the master and mistress had fled attainted of treason to the new republic." In stimulating popular appreciation of the value of saving things for their associations, of preserving what is historic and picturesque, and in offering a trusteeship for concentrating effort whether by gifts or by appeal to State intervention, the New York society is quietly but effectively doing a work that reaches in interest far beyond State bounds. It needs only a wider knowledge to give to its work a National character. No consular reports surTrade in Germany pass in interest those from Mr. Mason, our Consul-General at Berlin. In his latest report, published recently, he calls attention to the great increase of the export of American breadstuffs to Germany. Hence Agrarians insist that Germany is becoming too dependent upon the United States. "This senti ment was sharply evinced in the wholesale denunciation by the German press of the recent $20,000,000 loan which was placed by the Imperial Government at New York." It is pointed out that in the last decade the imports into the United States from Germany were $880,000,000, while the imports of Germany from the United States were valued at $1,080,000,000; and the question is asked when and where this dependence upon the Republic for cotton, copper, breadstuffs, meats, petroleum, forage grains, and now money, is going to end. As to manufactures, Mr. Mason says that the producing capacity of all leading German industries has been apparently reached, and that in several branches of iron and steel work the point of highest prosperity has been passed; production has more than overtaken the demands of home and foreign trade. The decline in the market for electrical machinery has been especially notable. "While many are disposed to admit that the creative energy of the past few years has pushed production beyond the present capacity of home and foreign markets, they insist that this activity is the result of much deeper and more permanent influences than those which determine a merely temporary industrial revival, and that their present position, attained through advanced technical and commercial education, industry, frugal living, and the skillful application of science to manufacturing processes, cannot be undermined by any mere stringency of money or other temporary cause." In short, Mr. Mason bids us remember that Germans have been trained for generations to hard work and plain living, and, while new and wider markets are urgently necessary, the people have acquired the capacity of cheap manufacture, the ships, and national force as a world power. Present discontent, therefore, whether on the part of agriculturists or of manufacturers, probably does not foreshadow any continued decline of Germany in tury, and rendered invaluable services in the cause of universal peace and the humanizing of war. We refer to the Institute of International Law (L'Institut de Droit International), founded in 1873 by the Belgian Minister Rolin-Jacquemyns. Its membership includes sixty of the most eminent jurisconsults of the world. The beneficent purpose of the Institute is to study cases likely to give rise to armed conflicts among nations, seek possible solutions of these conflicts, and propose them to the governments interested. The famous Hague Conference owes a debt of gratitude to the Institut de Droit International, whose years of patient labor and research spent in untiring efforts to codify the laws of war are at last bearing abundant fruit. Many indeed are the different projects it has considered and the reforms it has effected, such as matters relating to the international rights and obligations of the individual, the discussion of marriage and divorce among nations, and the consideration of legislation concerning legacies, wills, and the succession of property. The Institute elaborated the convention for guaranteeing the neutralization and free use of the Suez Canal, suggested the basis for the European compact opening the River Congo in Africa to the ships and commerce of all nations, and secured conventions to protect submarine cables. Although the Institute is a purely advisory body, its moral influence and authority are strongly felt throughout the world, and its wise and disinterested counsels so much respected that they have frequently been accepted by all enlightened governments as the basis of beneficial international treaties and conventions. During the last few years this learned body has held meetings in the Palace of the Doges at Venice, in the Royal Castle of Copenhagen, in the venerable University of Cambridge, and in The Hague during the coronation of Queen Wilhelmina. This year it held its annual session in the picturesque town of Neuchâtel, Switzerland-a fitting spot to select for its deliberations, as the illustrious writer on international law, Emer de Vattel, was born in that country, in Couret. His great work entitled "Droit des Gens," which abridged and systematized the international law of previous writers, such as Grotius, Puffendorf, and Wolf, was written in this place. The Ship Subsidy Bill Senator Hanna began his effective defense of the ship subsidy bill on Thursday of last week with a declaration regarding his own motives which we believe to be absolutely sincere. He advocated the bill, he said, not because he had personal interests in the shipping industry, but because he believed that the measure would promote the interests of the entire Nation. The fact that he became publicly the sponsor for the bill is of itself almost sufficient evidence of the genuineness of this conviction, while the manner and the matter of his arguments completely preclude the thought that he hoped through the subsidies to profit at the public expense. Nevertheless, the argument which he presented with so much earnestness and force does not shake our conviction that the granting of subsidies to special interests is in violation of the principles of public economy and public justice. The argument appealed consecutively to three powerful motives: 1. The fear of war. The appeal to the public fears was rhetorically the most striking. After stating that ninety-two per cent. of all our exports are carried in the ships of three foreign nations, he exclaimed: "Suppose war breaks out between these powers. Suppose their great navies begin to sweep the seas, destroying commerce and driving all merchant craft to havens of safety. What becomes of us? How are we to keep our mills and factories going, our men employed? We would have distress, starvation, despair!" This lurid picture had evidently remained in the Senator's imagination since the days when he denounced dependence on foreign trade and contended that this Nation ought to tax its people to confine them to home markets. It was strangely out of place in his present contention that the Nation ought to tax its people in order to develop foreign trade. If our foreign trade is in danger of being swept off the seas, then it is the supremest folly to subsidize it when our merchants do not think it naturally profitable. As a matter of fact, however, a century's experience has taught us that this danger is purely imaginary. Except when our own embargo laws were in force, our exports have steadily increased from the beginning, without serious interruption even from the blockades and counter blockades of the Napoleonic wars. Furthermore, international law now protects the merchandise of neutrals even when carried in enemies' ships. The only form of property in danger of being swept from the seas in the event of war is the very merchant marine in which Senator Hanna would subsidize American investments. But the main argument of Senator Hanna was the gain which he believed a subsidy to shipping would bring to other industries. 66 The struggle for the world's commerce," he said, "is becoming fierce; we are now on the very firing-line. Already our coal is going more and more abroad. We have the greatest resources in the way of minerals in the whole world. We can capture and hold the iron and steel markets of the world. But to do so we must have cheap freight rates upon the ocean. . . . We are leaving in the hands of foreigners millions upon millions of our trade balance because at the present time money earns better interest abroad than here. Why should we not put some of our idle capital into the building of ships and sailing them for the benefit of our producers and manufacturers?" What Senator Hanna keeps continually in the foreground is the benefit which the subsidy would bring to the industries which would pay it. Give the ship-owners $180,000,000, he says, and they will reduce freight rates. How much they will reduce them he does not say. Give the farm-owners $180,000,000, Senator Allen has rejoined, and they will reduce prices. Give the landlords $180,000,000, some one else might say, and they will reduce rents; or give the laborers $180,000,000 and they will reduce wages. In each case a slight reduction might take place; but in each case the law takes $180,000,000 from people who own it and gives it to people who do not, and lays upon the latter no obligation to give anything in return.. When such a proposal is made to benefit farmers or laborers, it is called legalized robbery, or robbery without the qualifying adjective. When it is made on behalf of ship-owners, it is called practical business. Senator Hanna's own argument shows that the reduction in freight rates would be slight. His fundamental assertion is that foreign ships carry freight so cheaply that it does not pay our capitalists to engage in the business. We think he overstates this point, for the recent activity in our ship-yards seems to show that, with steel as cheap here as it is abroad, America can regain the position she held in the world's carrying trade half a century ago, when ships were made of wood. But if Senator Hanna is right, and foreign ship-owners are carrying freight too cheaply for American capitalists to engage in the business, a subsidy limited to American ships would be the slowest possible method of securing a further reduction. We do not doubt Senator Hanna's sincerity, but the real object of the shipping subsidy is not to reduce freight rates, but to make it profitable for American ship-owners to perform the service now performed by foreigners. This is also the most reasonable purpose of the bill. To Senator Hanna's credit, he does not claim to be seeking employment for American seamen. There are few left in the foreign carrying trade, and the present bill requires only a small percentage of the sailors on the subsidized ships to be native Americans. There is no way in which American capital is invested so as to employ so little American labor as in the ocean carrying trade. Senator Hanna frankly urges that he wants to find employment for American capital. But is he not here singularly inconsistent with the Ohio statesman who used to urge so strongly the advantage which came to America from the employment of foreign capital? We believe that this advantage is real, and we therefore do not believe that it will pay the American people to tax themselves in order to drive out foreign capital from their carrying trade and attract American capital away from home investments. Senator Hanna's peroration was an appeal to patriotism. He wanted to put the ship subsidy, he said, upon "higher grounds than mere dollars and cents." National pride and love of country, he urged, demanded that Americans should be subsidized to engage in the foreign carrying trade. The motives here appealed to are the strongest factors in our public life, and if Senator Hanna's measure enlisted the finer pride or the higher patriotism of the country it would be indorsed despite the loss it will bring to the public treasury. But the finer pride of this Nation would not be evoked by the spectacle of another powerful interest profiting by the taxation of the people. Nor is the higher patriotism of the country stirred by the proposed commercial war upon the carrying trade of other nations. There are two forms of patriotism—the true and the false. The true patriotism is that which puts the good of one's country above the good of one's selfand of that patriotism we cannot have too much. The false patriotism is that which puts the good of one's country above the good of mankind—and of that patriotism the world is surfeited. Even if we did not recognize the presence of the moral law that with what measure we mete to other nations it is always measured to us again, the higher patriotism would still demand a commercial policy of international cooperation and not one of international conflict. It the United States and Great Britain to extend their joint support and protection to any satisfactory canal company which may undertake the work. This is, perhaps, an unobjectionable but it is also an unimportant clause. The interoceanic canal ought not to be a private property owned by stockholders, even if the United States is the controlling stockholder. should be a public waterway, open on equal terms to all peoples of all nations; and if such a public waterway is open and mutually guarded and protected by the United States and England, it is difficult to see any reason why the United States should assume the further responsibility of guarding and protecting a rival waterway owned by a private stock company. III. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty provides that neither Great Britain nor the United States shall ever obtain or maintain any exclusive control over the canal, but shall mutually guard the safety and neutrality of the canal, inviting all This was The Isthmian Canal and other nations to do the same. the Treaties Amid all the perplexities into which the public mind is thrown by the multitudinous and perplexing amendments offered to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in the United States Senate, there are a few principles which appear to us simple and clear. I. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty provides that neither Great Britain nor the United States shall ever take possession of any part of Central America, nor fortify any part of the same, nor establish any colonies there. Whether this treaty was wise at the time or not, it is not wise now to reaffirm any such agreement. America should leave herself free, and, if she is not free, should, if possible, secure freedom, to enter into whatever relations she pleases with Central American and South American Republics. That it will ever be wise for her to establish a protectorate over them, or make them colonies, or receive them into the United States as an integral part thereof, is very doubtful; but if the question ever arises, she should be free to decide it with no other interests to consider but her own and those of the particular States involved. a wise provision when the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was ratified and is a wise provision now. The question whether the canal should be an American waterway like the Mississippi River or Long Island Sound, or an interoceanic waterway like the Straits of Gibraltar or the Straits of Dover, is a fair question on which honest men may differ in opinion. In our judgment, every interest both of America and of the world at large favors the second of these two policies. It is true that an interoceanic canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would tend to facilitate, in time of war, the westward passage of a fleet intent on bombarding our Pacific coast. But the way to protect the Pacific coast in such an exigency would be to meet the fleet by our own fleet in the open waters, not at the gateway of the canal by fortifications. Moreover, this exigency is exceedingly unlikely to arise. The only conceivable peril would be from a British fleet, and it is far easier, cheaper, and better to safeguard our interests from possible attack by Great Britain by means of mutual agreement than by anticipations of attack and preparations to repel it. The true statesman looks to the future. It is clear to one who does thus look II. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty pledges to the future that, as the issue of the past was between Anglo-Saxon and Latin civilization, so the issue of the future is between Anglo-Saxon and Slavic civilizations. The competing powers of the twentieth century will be England and the United States, with probably Germany and Japan as allies, on the one hand, and Russia, with possibly France as an ally, on the other. The wise statesman will make every provision possible by establishing cordial relations between all the kindred races for the final victory of the AngloSaxon type of civilization. How far the financial interests of the Panama Canal Company, bent on preventing a rival waterway, and the financial interests of the Pacific railroads, bent on preventing any waterway, are responsible for the opposition in the Senate to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, we do not know. We are loth to give credence to unauthenticated rumors of this description. But it is to us clear that the Senate and the Administration should unite in securing, first, a waterway between the oceans not owned by stockholders, private or public; and, secondly, this waterway made international and dependent for its protection, not on United States forts at its gateway or in its center, but upon the agreement of the civilized world to preserve it, as it preserves other international waterways which are neither private nor national property. The Australian Common wealth On the first day of the new century the six colonies of Australia will become finally merged in "The Commonwealth of Australia." The event is one of more than common importance, not only to the people of the Pacific continent, but also to the whole of the British Empire, and even, though less directly, to the civilized world. So far the history of the English colonies of Australia has been one of remarkable success. As separate and self-governing communities they have in less than fifty years gone far to develop the resources of a country as large as the United States, and in doing so have themselves become apparently the richest community, in proportion to their numbers, which the world can show at the close of the nineteenth century. They have also been remarkable for leading the way in not a few valuable reforms in democratic administration, and in some economic experiments in government likely to be of service to the world at large. To them America as well as England has owed the Australian ballot; and in her fourteen thousand miles of government railroads and forty-eight thousand miles of government telegraphs she is giving other and older countries valuable object-lessons which cannot fail to be of increasing value. England has crowned a long series of services rendered by her to her colonies in Australia by allowing the people themselves a perfectly free hand in forming a Federal Constitution. The Constitution thus formed is a singular compromise in many respects between those of this country and of Canada, with some provisions added which are more democratic than either. Unlike the Canadian Constitution, that of the new Commonwealth confines the powers of the Federal Parliament and Executive strictly to the subjects and within the limits expressly assigned to them by the terms of the Constitution; on the other hand, it enlarges the scope of those subjects by the addition of some very important ones not recognized by our own Constitution as Federal concerns. Among these are the laws of marriage and divorce, labor legislation. age pensions and the exclusive right to generally-including arbitration and oldembody and control any armed force within the Commonwealth. But while the scope of Federal control is thus extended in some directions, it is curtailed in others. The vast landed estate of the publicamounting still to nearly nineteen hundred millions of acres will not vest in the Commonwealth, but will remain under State control; navigable lakes and rivers situated entirely within the limits of a single State, as most of them are, will remain under State management; and while the telegraph and telephone services will go with the post-office to the Federal Government, the property and management of the public railroads will remain with the States, except in so far as their use is required for purposes of military transport. The Executive of the new Common |