These dogs are the outstanding feature of the northern trading posts. "Huskies" they are called, and interesting animals they arehalf wild, unaccustomed to kindness, and always hungry. To pet a husky is to risk losing a finger, for they are often half wolf, and their slashing teeth are dangerous. But they know the meaning of a suddenly upraised arm, and slink away at the sight of a club directed at them.

A real "husky" seldom barks, but at the least provocation howls like a lost soul. And Fort Smith always has a wail or two floating on the air, and when these half wild dogs begin to sing in chorus the result is blood curdling.

In the winter they are, of course, at work in

harness, but with the coming of summer they have no work to do, and the Indians who own them feel that doing no work they should get no food. The result is that nothing is safe.

When boats are being launched and the ways are greased, a man must be on guard to prevent the dogs from eating the grease. They will open a can of hard oil, and with the utmost pleasure devour the contents. They will steal, and will get at stocks of food that seem to be safe from any marauder. At Hay River-a post on Great Slave Lake-a child stumbled and fell last spring near a pack of these hungry beasts and almost instantly was torn to pieces. But lack of food in summer and the inconsiderate treatment they receive makes veritable

Stories of the mosquitoes in the north seldom do justice to the subject. On the rivers and lakes the wind keeps the boats fairly free of them, but in the bush such sights as this are not uncommon

Every trading post is overrun with these dogs. They are often part wolf, and are always hungry, making it necessary for one to watch them always. A club is a good thing to carry when many of them are around

I went down the hundred foot bank to the river, where the boats were tied up, and for the first time got an idea that after all there might be some some signs of an oil rush. Two large steamers, one small one and dozens of other boats lined the bank, while scows that had been dragged over the portage were lying all along the side of the road from the top of the high bank to the bottom.

Log warehouses were receiving freight, several new boats were being built, canoes were piled everywhere, and heavy freight was coming in an irregular and seemingly endless stream across the portage. The steamers were loading, and despite the hour-for it was evening

everyone was busy. Wagon load after wagon load of freight came down the steep sandy hill, with brakes squeaking and horses straining backward in their harness, and on the river bank men struggled with heavy loads and hauled them aboard the steamers or stowed them in the barges, for here at Ft. Smith all the freight and all the passengers bound for the oil fields were for the first time collected after having come from "the outside" by two different routes on many different river boats. And here the three steamers that operate on that great stretch of river and lake north to the Arctic were loading, preparatory to their first trip of the year north to the new Eldorado of the midnight sun.

T

HE late so-called World War was really but a civil war within the European civilization-of which the Americas, Australasia, and South Africa are integral outgrowths. But, for decades, certain forces seem to have been arraying the Asiatic world against the white world. Thus it becomes manifest that we are facing conditions making for a real world war instead of what was virtually but a civil war among the whites. It follows that the present It follows that the present responsibility upon Americans and upon the Washington Conference for a sound and farsighted solution of the situation is unprecedented.

It is now clear that the way to have prevented the war that Germany brought on in 1914 would have been to have turned her from the imperialistic war path along which the "blood and iron" doctrines of Bismarck had been leading her since 1864. And now, to agree upon and to apply adequate preventive and corrective measures to the imperialism that has been growing in the Far East for nearly three decades is the primary responsibility at the door of the Washington Conference. When

it shall have become manifest that such measures will be accepted and carried out by all concerned, then and only then our national armaments may be limited by agreement, with safety. The likeness between the imperialism of Germany and that in the Far East goes back to the sixteenth century. It does not seem to have been generally recalled that, soon after America was discovered, Germans made an unsuccessful attempt to establish themselves there in competition with the Spanish. But having failed in this early overseas adventure, the Germans remained ashore in Central Europe; while the relatively vacant spaces of the world progressively were being won by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English. Not to have participated effectively along with the other peoples of Europe in their expansion into the Americas, Africa, and Australia was a basic mistake on the part of the sixteenth century Germans. And at bottom it was to retrieve the effects of this mistake that modern German imperial power was evolved for the defeat of France and England and the capture of their overseas domains and trade.

There are said to be indications that long