zens of the principal city and commercial port of the Pacific coast represented by the city government of San Francisco; their interest in common with all the people of the state of California represented by the governor and legislature at Sacramento; and their interests in common with all the people of the United States represented by the national government at Washington. Each one of these three different governmental agencies had authority to do certain things relating to the treatment of Japanese residents in San Francisco. These three interests could not be really in conflict; for the best interest of the whole country is always the true interest of every state and city, and the protection of the interests of every locality in the country is always the true interest of the nation. There was, however, a supposed or apparent clashing of interests, and, to do away with this, conference, communication, comparison of views, explanation of policy and purpose were necessary. Many thoughtless and some mischievous persons have spoken and written regarding these conferences and communications as if they were the parleying and compromise of enemies. On the contrary, they were an example of the way in which the public business ought always to be conducted; so that the different public officers respectively charged with the performance of duties affecting the same subject-matter may work together in furtherance of the same public policy and with a common purpose for the good of the whole country and every part of the country. Such a concert of action with such a purpose was established by the conferences and communications between the national authorities and the authorities of California and San Francisco which followed the passage of the board of education resolution.

There was one great and serious question underlying the whole subject which made all questions of construction and of scope and of effect of the treaty itself—all questions as to whether the claims of Japan were well founded or not; all questions as to whether the resolution of the school board was valid or not-seem temporary and comparatively unimportant. It was not a question of war with Japan. All the foolish talk about war was purely sensational and imaginative. There was never even friction between the two governments. The question was, What state of feeling would be created between the great body of the people of the United States and the great body of the people

of Japan as a result of the treatment given to the Japanese in this country?

What was to be the effect upon that proud, sensitive, highly civilized people across the Pacific, of the discourtesy, insult, imputations of inferiority and abuse aimed at them in the columns of American newspapers and from the platforms of American public meetings? What would be the effect upon our own people of the responses that natural resentment for such treatment would elicit from the Japanese?

The first article of the first treaty Japan ever made with a western power provided:

There shall be a perfect, permanent, and universal peace and a sincere and cordial amity between the United States of America on the one part, and the empire of Japan on the other part, and between their people respectively, without exception of persons or places.

Under that treaty, which bore the signature of Matthew Calbraith Perry, we introduced Japan to the world of western civilization. We had always been proud of her wonderful development—proud of the genius of the race that in a single generation adapted an ancient feudal system of the far East to the most advanced standards of modern Europe and America. The friendship between the two nations had been peculiar and close. Was the declaration of that treaty to be set aside? At Kurihama, in Japan, stands a monument to Commodore Perry, raised by the Japanese in grateful appreciation, upon the site where he landed and opened negotiations for the treaty. Was that monument henceforth to represent dislike and resentment? Were the two peoples to face each other across the Pacific in future years with angry and resentful feelings? All this was inevitable if the process which seemed to have begun was to continue, and the government of the United States looked with the greatest solicitude upon the possibility that the process might continue.

It is hard for democracy to learn, the responsibilities of its power; but the people now, not governments, make friendship or dislike, sympathy or discord, peace or war, between nations. In this modern day, through the columns of the myriad press and messages flashing over countless wires, multitude calls to multitude across boundaries and oceans in courtesy or insult, in amity or in defiance. Foreign offices and ambassadors and ministers no longer keep or break the peace, but the conduct of each people toward every other. The

people who permit themselves to treat the people of other countries with discourtesy and insult are surely sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, for a world of sullen and revengeful hatred can never be a world of peace. Against such a feeling treaties are waste paper and diplomacy the empty routine of idle form. The great question which overshadowed all discussion of the treaty of 1894 was the question: Are the people of the United States about to break friendship with the people of Japan? That question, I believe, has been happily answered in the negative.

THE CONVENTION OF 1907 BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES

AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

On February 15, 1905, the president of the United States transmitted to the senate, with an accompanying message, the protocol of an agreement, signed eleven days earlier, between the United States and the Dominican Republic, providing for the collection and disbursement by the United States of the customs revenues of the Dominican Republic. On February 25, 1907, a little more than two years later, the senate ratified an independent convention between the United States and the Dominican Republic, signed at Santo Domingo City by the plenipotentiaries on the 8th inst. preceding, providing for the assistance of the United States in the collection and application of the customs revenues of the Dominican Republic. At this time of writing the new convention awaits only the approval of the Dominican congress to become operative.

Distinct in authorship and notably different in content, this second instrument nevertheless represents a rational solution of the difficulties -as modified by the progress of two years-which occasioned the first agreement. This will appear from a brief review of the conditions obtaining in the Dominican Republic two years ago and of the provisions of the original protocol, considered in the light of the working of the interim arrangement and of the important features of the new convention.

The recent history of San Domingo may be conveniently dated from the energetic movement to effect its annexation to the United States, in 1869-1870. The amazing political experiences of the republic in the thirty-five years which succeeded the annexation movement can only be described as a miserable sequence of revolution and anarchy, interrupted by ruthless and blood-stained dictatorships. From 1871 to 1882, Cabral, Baez, Gonzales and Luperon alternated in control, their struggles being marked by uprising, ravage and bloodshed, and terminating invariably in social demoralization and economic ruin. It was during this decade that the most vicious rules of the game of revolution

as it is played in San Domingo won acceptance. In 1882, Ulises Heureaux came to the fore in Dominican politics, and the next seventeen years form the story of his uncontrolled dominance. For a time his creatures were installed in the presidency to preserve a semblance of constitutional form, but throughout he was absolute dictator. Heureaux's rule was not even a benevolent despotism. Brutal cruelty, insatiable greed, moral degeneracy, were the man's personal characteristics, and they shaped his political conduct and his administrative activity. If San Domingo was at peace during Heureaux's time, it was the peace of a merciless terrorism, not the quiet of civil government.

A seeming well-being prevailed, but it was attained by bartering the resources of the country in prodigal concessions, and by discounting the future in reckless debt accumulation. With Heureaux's assassination in 1899 came the deluge and the next five years constitute a climax even in the history of Latin-American politics. Figuereo, Vasquez, Jimenez, Vasquez again, Wossy Gil, and Morales successively occupied the presidential chair, each attaining it by much the same means and holding it by as uncertain tenure. The ordinary crimes of the political decalogue became commonplace. The country was laid waste, the people crushed to hopelessness, the treasury left to stew in utter bankruptcy, and a host of creditors, foreign and domestic, after tightening their hold upon the future became more and more insistent in the present. In January-February, 1905, in face of the imminent likelihood of domestic convulsion and foreign intervention, the protocol of an agreement was concluded between the Dominican Republic and the United States, and this was made effective by a decree of the Dominican executive of March 31, 1905.

The protocol recited in preamble form that the Dominican government was menaced by intervention on the part of nations whose citizens held claims which it was unable to satisfy, and that the republic both desired to reach an agreement with its creditors and to assure for itself the regular receipt of revenues for internal administration, without interruption either by foreign creditors or by political disturbances; moreover that the United States, in compliance with the request of the Dominican government, was disposed to lend its assistance toward effecting a satisfactory settlement with all the creditors.