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R. BENJAMIN KIDD, the author of "Social Evolution "—a book whose sale of two hundred thousand copies exceeds that of any other work on social philosophy-came to this country last week to study American conditions, with a special view to the production of a book on which he is engaged which is to take the shape of a further development of social philosophy on the lines followed in "Social Evolution." But of this he would not now speak. On the burning question of the moment a representative of The Outlook had, however, a most interesting conversation with Mr. Kidd. He has recently published in the London "Times" a striking series of articles entitled "The Control of the Tropics." These articles have already created a great deal of interest and controversy in England, and are to be published immediately in book form in this country by the Macmillans. The real application of the principles laid down is on the present crisis in America. In conversation Mr. Kidd again and again returned to this subject, which is uppermost in his mind as well as in the minds of all serious Americans.

Though an unflinching and aggressive Liberal and Radical upon all questions relating to the equalizing of opportunities, Mr. Kidd's attitude toward the control of the tropics by English-speaking races represents a considerable development from the standards which have controlled English develop ment under the influence of the Liberal party for the past half-century. This does not mean that he cares for the assertion of power over foreign peoples. Of this in itself he spoke throughout with a deep underlying tone of dislike. The note which pervaded all he said was simply that of the duty of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to their own ideals and principles in the crisis upon which they have entered.

To understand Mr. Kidd's fundamental position it is necessary to know that he considers the development of the tropics as bound to proceed. We are driven, he says, by economic forces over which we have no control. In the growing rivalry of nations trade along parallels of latitude tends to become relatively less important. The natural channels of trade in the future will be north and south. He gave figures and facts to

show to what an enormous extent our civilization already rests on the products of the tropics-e.g., sugar, india-rubber, tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, drugs, dyes, woods, foods.

To quote his words: "We have, therefore, to recognize at the outset, as a first principle of the situation, the utter futility of any policy based on the conception that it will be possible in the future to hold our hands and stand aloof from the tropics. There can be no choice in this matter. With the filling up of the temperate regions and the continued development of industrialism throughout the civilized world the rivalry and struggle for the trade of the tropics will, beyond doubt, be the permanent underlying fact in the foreign relations of the Western nations in the twentieth century. This anticipation must be based, in the first place, on the fact of the enormous extent to which our civilization already rests on the productions of the tropics, and, in the second place, on the fact that the principle underlying all trade—that exchange of products between regions and peoples of different capacities tends to be mutually profitable-finds in commerce between ourselves and these regions its most natural expression."

The question, therefore, with which we are interested is: Under what conditions is the development of the tropics to proceed?

Germany, France, Italy, are struggling with all their power to extend their dominions, and we know from the past and from the present in what way they will exercise the power which they acquire. Practically, he said, these nations still govern their colonies upon the principles which were abandoned by England after the secession of the American States. They treat them as estates to be exploited for the benefit of the countries possessing them, and, no matter with what pledges they enter upon their conquests, the spirit of their rule is necessarily in accordance with standards which the Englishspeaking peoples have for nearly a century rejected.

The attempted acclimatization of the white man in the tropics Mr. Kidd considers to have failed. "If," he said, "the white man cannot be permanently acclimatized in the tropics, even where for the time being he has become relatively numerous, under the

effects of evil conditions of the past, the government of all such regions must, if the ideas and standards which have prevailed in the past be allowed to continue, tend ultimately in one direction. It must tend to become the government of a large native population by a permanently resident European caste cut off from the moral, ethical, political, and physical conditions which have produced the European." This he considers to be the real problem in many States in the tropical parts of central America and in northern South America. "We cannot look for good government under such conditions; we have no right to expect it. In climatic conditions which are a burden to him; in the midst of races in a different and lower stage of development; divorced from the influences which have produced him, from the moral and political environment from which he sprang, the white man does not, in the end, in such circumstances, tend so much to raise the level of the races among whom he has made his unnatural home, as he tends himself to sink slowly to the level around him."

The next proposition on which Mr. Kidd bases his argument is that "there never has been, and there never will be, within any time with which we are practically concerned, such a thing as good government, in the European sense, of the tropics by the natives of these regions." The human race reached its earliest development where the conditions of life were easiest; namely, in the tropics. But throughout the whole period of human history the development of the race has taken place outwards from the tropics. Slowly but surely we see the seat of empire and authority moving, like the advancing tide, northward. The evolution in character which the race has undergone has been northwards from the tropics. The first step to the solution of the problem before us is simply to recognize the principle that, in dealing with the natural inhabitants of the tropics, we are dealing with peoples who represent the same stage in the history of the development of the race that the child does in the history of the development of the individual.

"The tropics," he affirms, "will not be developed by the natives themselves.

If we

look to the native social systems of the tropical East, to the primitive savagery of Central Africa, to the West Indian Islands in the past in process of being assisted into the position of modern States by Great Britain, to the Black Republic, Hayti, in the

present, or to modern Liberia in the future, the lesson seems everywhere the same; it is that there will be no development of the re. sources of the tropics under native government."

We come, therefore, his argument proceeds, to a clearly defined position. If we have to meet the economic fact that by force of circumstances the tropics must be developed, and if the evidence is equally emphatic that such a development can take place only under the influence of the white man, we are confronted with a larger issue than any mere question of commercial policy or of national selfishness. The tropics in such circumstances can be governed only as a trust for civilization, and with a full sense of the responsibility which such a trust involves. The first principle of success in undertaking such a duty seems to Mr. Kidd to be a clear recognition of the cardinal fact that "in the tropics the white man lives and works only as a diver lives and works under water. Alike in a moral, in an ethical, and in a political sense, the atmosphere he breathes must be that of another region, that which produced him and to which he belongs. Neither physically, morally, nor politically, can he be acclimatized in the tropics. The people among whom he lives and works are often separated from him by thousands of years of development; he cannot, therefore, be allowed to administer government from any local and lower standard he may develop. If he has any right there at all, he is there in the nameof civilization; if our civilization has any right there at all, it is because it represents higher ideals of humanity, a higher type of social order."

This brought the discussion to a very interesting point, and the conversation touched on many phases of this wide subject which immediately present themselves; the old position in the slavery question in the South, the relations of the United States to the Indians in the past, the relations of the British Government to the natives in India and Egypt at the present day, the opium question in the East, and others of like interest and importance, were discussed in turn. On all of these it was clear that Mr. Kidd had already thought deeply and occupied a clear and welldefined position. He drew a wide distinction between a ruling race permanently resident among a race of lower development, and a tropical country in reality administered from the temperate regions in touch with

and directly controlled by the standards of our civilization. He was very emphatic about the advantages of the civil service system in India and Egypt, and the high standards of duty maintained in those services. The influence of the university ideals as distinct from those of party politics seemed to him a matter of the first importance. The influence of the work done by men like Lord Cromer in Egypt, and Sir Alfred Milner, now Governor of South Africa, he declared had not only been good in itself, but had given the nation a sense of responsibility which had tended to raise the standards of public life at home.

Speaking of the old and the new in India, Mr. Kidd said: "The one consistent idea which, through all outward forms, has in late years been behind the institution of the higher Indian civil service on existing lines is that, even where it is equally open to natives with Europeans through competitive examination, entrance to it shall be made through a British university university In other words, it is the best and most distinctive product which England can give, the higher ideals and standards of her universities, which is made to feed the inner life from which the British administration of India proceeds. It is but the application of the same principle which we have in the recog nition of the fact that no violent hands must be laid on native institutions, or native rights, or native systems of religion, or even on native independence, so far as respect for existing forms is compatible with the efficient administration of the government. It is but another form of the recognition of the fact that we are in the midst of habits and institutions from which our civilization is sepa

rated by a long interval of development, where progress upwards must be a long, slow process, must proceed on native lines, and must be the effect of the example and prestige of higher standards rather than the result of ruder methods. It is on a like principle that the development of the tropical region occupied must be held to be the fulfillment of a trust undertaken in the name of civilization, a duty which allows the occupying country to surround her own position therein with no laws or tariffs operating in her own interests, and which allows her to retain to herself no exclusive advantage in the markets which she has assisted in creating."

Everything depended, said Mr. Kidd, as the talk grew more serious-and here there was the heartiest agreement-upon the spirit in which the work was undertaken. "What about the tariff in the Philippines?" he was asked. Mr. Kidd had said at the beginning that the task, if undertaken, would involve as high and broad a conception of national duty as any which had shaped the develo ment of the United States in the past. He now made clear what he meant. "You want to know what I think? Well," he said, speaking slowly, "if America decides to retain the Philippines. and decides at the same time to maintain a tariff like Spain, operating in her own favor, she will have given away her case before the world. She may occupy the Phil. ippines with a clear conscience and a stern face to the world if she occupies them in the name of higher ideals of government and as a trust for civilization, giving equal opportunities to all. You have a right to impose what tariffs you please at home. It is a different matter to impose them on others for your own selfish advantage."

table-steward "Tommy" to lower to me over the ship's side a few slices of bread and butter and a cup of coffee. A half-shocked and half-indignant expression came into her face as she mentally grasped the situation, and replied with emphasis, "Certainly! just wait a minute." She rushed back into the cabin to call "Tommy," while I sat down on a bag of beans with the comforting assurance that if I did not get something to eat that afternoon there would be a fracas on the State of Texas. Mrs. Porter evidently regarded it as an extraordinary state of affairs which forced the Vice-President of the Red Cross to go hungry in a starving city because a ship flying the Red Cross flag refused to allow him on board.

In five minutes more "Tommy" appeared in the starboard gangway of the main deck, and lowered down to me on a tray a most appetizing lunch of bread and butter, cold meats, fried potatoes, preserved peaches, ice-water, and coffee. I resumed my seat on the bag of beans, holding the tray on my knees, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of the first meal I had had in Santiago, and the best one, it seemed to me, that ever glad dened the heart of a hungry human being in any city. The temperature in the fierce sunshine which beat down on my back was at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit; the cold meats were immediately warmed up; the butter turned to a yellowish fluid which could have been applied to bread only with a paint brush, and perspiration ran off my nose into my coffee-cup as I drank; but the coffee and the fried potatoes kept hot without the aid of artificial appliances, and I emptied the glass of ice-water in two or three thirsty gulps before it had time to come to a boil. Mrs. Porter watched me with sympathetic interest, as if she were enjoying my lunch even more than she had enjoyed her own, and when I had finished she said, "It is absurd that you should have to take your meals on that hot, dirty pier; but if you'll come down every day and call for me, I'll see that you get enough to eat, even if they don't allow you on board."

All the rest of that week I slept in the Anglo-American Club and took my meals on the pier of the Juragua Iron Company, Mrs. Porter keeping me abundantly supplied with food, while I tried to make my society an equivalent for my board by furnishing her, three times a day, with the news of the city. Getting my meals in a basket or on a tray

over the ship's side and eating them alone on the pier was rather humiliating at first, and made me feel, for a day or two, like a homeless tramp subsisting on charity; but when General Wood, the military governor of the city, and Dr. Van DeWater, chaplain of the Seventy-first New York, came down to the State of Texas one afternoon to see Mrs. Porter and were not allowed to go on board, even for a drink of water, my self-respect was measurably restored. Dr. Van De Water had walked into the city from the camp of his regiment, a distance of two or three miles, in the fierce tropical sunshine, and was evidently suffering acutely from fatigue and thirst; but the State of Texas, where, under the Red Cross flag, he naturally expected to find rest and refreshment, was barred against him, and he had to get his drink of water as I got my daily bread, over the ship's side. The quarantine of the steamer against the shore would perhaps have been a little more consistent, as well as more effective, if the officers who superintended the unloading and storing of the cargo had not been permitted to visit every day the lowest and dirtiest part of the city and then return to the steamer to eat and sleep, and if the crew had not been allowed to roam about the streets in search of adventures at night; but I suppose it was found impracticable to enforce the quarantine against everybody, and the most serious and threatening source of infection was removed, of course, when General Wood, Dr. Van De Water, and the correspondent of The Outlook were rigidly excluded from the ship.

While I was living at the Anglo-American Club and boarding on the pier of the Juragua Iron Company the deserted and half-dead city of Santiago was slowly awakening to life and activity. The empty streets filled gradually with American soldiers, paroled Spanish prisoners, and returning fugitives from Caney; shops that had long been shut and barred were thrown open under the assurance of protection given by the American flag; kerosene lamps on brackets fastened to the walls of houses at the corners of the narrow streets were lighted at night so that pedestrians could get about without danger of tumbling into holes or falling over garbage heaps; Government transports suddenly made their appearance in the bay, and as many of them as could find accommodation at the piers began to discharge cargo; six-mule army wagons rumbled and rattled over the rough cobble-stone pavements as they came