matter-of-fact overlords in Europe also began to take stock of a business where the balance was invariably on the wrong side of the ledger. It is quite difficult to prove this statement, but there is much reason to believe that our English cousins, the most businesslike of overlords, some twenty years ago made what might, had it been received with enthusiasm, have developed into a formal offer to sell their out-at-the elbow West Indian islands to Uncle Sam for a reasonable sum, and to-day some think there is a standing offer on file in Washington whereby John Bull pledges himself to take our Philippine troubles off our hands if we in turn would only oblige by shouldering his West Indian burden.

Perhaps the fruit trade between the islands and the mother countries across the Atlantic in refrigerated steamers, which is just beginning, will save the economic situation and perhaps it will not. Perhaps the English threat of reducing the scale and the class of government given that the cost of administration may be reduced to the level of the revenue collected-will, in some hardup day when the old-age pensions have to be paid, be carried into effect, and then perforce West Indian civilisation will take a backward step by which our interests cannot but be affected.

One hundred and fifty years ago all the powers of the world were competing for the possession of the islands, which many of them to-day would gladly abandon if the way to doing so were clear. And those powers which to-day, like Germany, cannot successfully deny the impeachment of coveting West Indian real estate, it is equally clear, only regard them as strategic positions or stepping-stones to more desirable places and

heights beyond. Vast economic changes are impending in the Caribbean as a result of the construction of the isthmian canal, and it behooves us not to neglect any advantages which may accrue as a result of our tremendous canal investment. When the impending changes have taken place, the political situation of all our insular and continental neighbours is not likely to remain as it is.

Of our recent relations with the various governments which exist in the countries that are washed by the Caribbean waters there is little to be said. All that might be said is either well known or not worth saying.

Grant had a strange yearning for these islands and he never forgave those men who defeated the perhaps then ill-considered projects of annexation and purchase which he cherished. A little later, it would appear from a recent volume of Mr. Rhodes, the idea of national aggrandisement in the West Indies found a spokesman in Sumner, the man who had, and perhaps the only man who could have, defeated Grant's Santo Domingo scheme.

It was at the time when the burning question of the 'Alabama claims had brought Great Britain and the United States to the brink of war, and Mr. Fish was urging upon Thornton, the English Minister at Washington, in anything but an academic spirit, the withdrawal of Her Majesty's government from Canada, that Sumner outlined the most out-and-out America for the United States policy which was ever penned. In this formal paper, which is known in our diplomatic history as the "Sumner hemisphere flag withdrawal memorandum," the Senator from Massachusetts, who was also chairman of the foreign relations committee, wrote

"To make the settlement complete," referring to the claims and the Fenian troubles, "the withdrawal [British] should be from this hemisphere, including provinces and islands."

More important even than the Spanish war which left us proprietor of Porto Rico and protector and sponsor for Cuba, in bringing about the new conditions in the West Indies, were the consequences of the Venezuelan correspondence between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Olney. After having ignored, if he did not flout the Monroe Doctrine, the English earl ended by canonising it. So far from opposing the extension and general acceptance of this hemisphere-embracing creed, Lord Salisbury and his successors in the British Foreign Office have placed their own possessions under the defensive shield out of which they once feared offensive weapons might be forged.

When the Venezuelan boundary question came on the international carpet, the British islands of the Caribbean were the scenes of much naval and military activity. It was then the plan and the frank purpose of the British government to make Jamaica and St. Lucia impregnable. Vast sums were spent at Castries and elsewhere. Then swiftly came the change of policy, the great naval station was abandoned, the immense fortresses were left unfinished, the white troops were withdrawn, the powerful squadrons sailed away, never to return. It was announced that the West Indian colonies had been abandoned as factors in the scheme of imperial defence, and it never was denied that as a result of the OlneySalisbury correspondence and the development of the for many decades neglected Monroe Doctrine, the British government had decided to place its islands under the

protection of the overlord of the Caribbean, whose seat is in Washington.

The situation of the Dutch and of the Danish colonies in the Caribbean is similar and equally unhappy. These are thrifty nations which have never hitherto governed colonies at a loss, as they are doing to-day. In population and in commerce these colonies are inconsiderable, and they cost a pretty penny, which is onerous upon the limited treasuries of the countries to which they belong. They are only rich in potential qualities, which require the developing hand of a world-power.

The West Indian "advance" men, who are continually preaching in Berlin and in Hamburg about the possibilities of the Caribbean situation, commercial and political, are quite right when they say that once the German flag is raised over St. Thomas and Santa Cruz, over Curaçao and Margarita, the strategic and defensive position of the German empire in the West Indies would be as strong as that of the United States, and stronger than that of England, whose positions were chosen, and exceedingly well chosen, for the days of sailing vessels. Now and again the traveller through these to-day lonely and, as far as sails are concerned, forsaken seas comes upon some moss-grown fortress with dismantled battlements and wonders what it was for and why it was built there. His enquiry and research soon reveal the fact that in the golden days of sugar in the eighteenth century these forts commanded certain passages and channels of the sea which it was necessary for traders to pass through in the era before steam, when the trade winds ruled this part of the world with something closely akin to tyranny.

So the Dutch and the Danish colonies are run at a loss,

which is bad, but the political exigencies of the situation require of the Dutch and the Danish home governments to make believe that they enjoy throwing money into the Caribbean, which is worse. They are both equally concerned to see postponed the day when the question of the ultimate destination of these islands shall pass beyond the academic stage. The statesmen of The Hague know perhaps better than we do, or at least in more detail, how extremely anxious Berlin is to secure these positions which might be regarded as indispensable if the future of the empire is to be upon the water, as Emperor William says it is.

Not being able to part with what once were profitable plantations, but are now simply costly toys-neither to Germany, because we would regard such a step as a breach of the Monroe Doctrine and most certainly a casus belli, nor to us, because Germany could and probably would make things unpleasant for the vendors at home-the Hague and the Copenhagen governments will probably continue to foot their West Indian bills with the best grace imaginable until the next general adjustment of balances and unfinished business is reached between the powers as the result of war or the awakening of an intelligent self-interest.

There is, of course, another view of the situation of the British colonies, but neither in England nor in the islands is it shared by many thoroughly conversant with West Indian conditions. This view has been well expressed by Mr. Holland in the National Review:

"The imperial conference of 1907," he writes, "when the air was full of projects for a closer imperial union, showed that definite projects must be postponed. Nevertheless the imperial conference itself is now more