"Now, look here, you damned chinkdon't forget to feed that cat of yours again! The thing kept me awake with its yowling! What you trying to do, anyway? Experimenting to see how bad tempered you can make it?"

places, before they turn over their jobs." He laughed. "I wonder if it can be that miserable glass?"

But the orchids were stretching against the morning sky the same bare, ugly twigs of the day before. They looked blighted. However, after coming out of my way to see them in bloom, it would be rather a childish performance to go before they flowered. Troil had assured me that they were due now. But I felt a strong desire to leave Tacloban.

Mrs. Troil did not come out of her room before tiffin. Troil and I breakfasted together, and before we had finished the meal Lim Li slid in for the day's orders. The fat Chinaman was impassive, calm; his master's irascibility of the early morning had not disturbed him. He did not glance at No. 1 boy, who was serving. But the other Chinaman hurried from the room.

Troil took me out to the porch for our after-breakfast cigars. Troil was speaking, with futile. bitterness, of how he missed the rite of the morning newspaper, when No. 1 boy came into sight. There is something about a Chinaman's walk that in No. I boy was accentuated; a slithering movement of the hips, an uncoiling of folds, a gradual progression in sections. I disliked it intensely. I looked away from him as he came toward Troil. “My go,” he said laconically. "My go Mallila."

Troil sat upright, his cigar clamped in a corner of his mouth.

"You put friend in your place?" he asked with equal brevity.

"No got flen Tacloban side. My go allee samee." He turned and went back into the house.

Troil whistled under his breath. "That's a new one on me!" he exclaimed. "Never knew a Chinaman to take French leave before. It's a point of honor with them to put friends in their

"Good!" he said. "I'll get you your transportation after tiffin."

But the occurrence seemed to stick in his mind. He referred to it several times, saying that he was still learning the ways of the yellow-skinned half.

Tiffin that day was smooth in its start. No. 1 boy, serving, padded from table to console, from dining-room to kitchen. Mrs. Troil, in a loose sacque of white cotton, a native skirt of red and yellow plaid, her bare feet thrust into green plush chinelas, sat loosely at the head of the table and seemed unaware of her fall from the European costume of the day before. Her way of speaking had taken color from her clothes; her English was more slovenly.

The midday heat of the room was oppressive. The punkah that waved along the ceiling made only the faintest stir in the air. Several times Mrs. Troil called out, in pidgin English, to the punkahboy on the balcony outside.

"Look-see top-side!" she screamed. "You plenty cry, you no plenty work, you -!" she concluded.

No. 1 boy, I remember, was removing the salad. He deftly slid the plate from in front of his master and started around the table toward me.

The table was a small one. I felt the spasm that shook Mrs. Troil; I felt the tremor of the table on which she leaned, I heard the long-drawn sigh with which she sank back in her chair. Her face was convulsed, her eyes closed, but the color was still in her lips and her breathing even. She remained in this state for some minutes. I started to her assistance, but Troil motioned me to stay where I was.

"She is often seized like this," he said quietly. "Sort of trance. Better not to arouse her suddenly."

Mrs. Troil struggled back. Her eyes blared open. She gazed at the wall between my head and Troil's, and started speaking. She spoke monotonously, in a sing-song; but by some power of drama within her she painted on the wall what she described.

"Strange!" she began, forming her words slowly and with care. "I saw a strange scene! A kitchen-two faces close to each other-lips rolled back from yellow teeth-like masks of rage, of ferocious rage-masks of the blood lust -those antique murder-masks of the theatre; they looked as dreadful as that! A knife gleamed in the hand of the man with thick lips-it was drawn-soacross a bared throat-the bared throat of the old face

No. I boy had stopped short, his eyes fixed upon her in horror. His thick lips rolled back from his long, yellow teeth; his face distorted. There was a guttural rattle in his throat. The plate which he carried dropped to the floor. He bolted from the room.

-mingling with the snarl of the cat which was again prowling-a strangling scream, with gargling in its throat.

We rushed back through the house to the kitchen, from which the scream had come. Troil, whose uneasiness had been increasing, was in front. I followed close at his heels, but the scream was in my blood, and I stumbled over a rockingchair. The sound of its empty rocking added to the cold of my spine. The flapping of Mrs. Troil's chinelas, coming after me, were flaps on my naked flesh of something dreadful-something which we saw at the door of the kitchen, but which I now knew that I had seen in the woman's eye as she sneered at Troil.

No. 1 boy was on the floor, half in and half out of the room, lying in a rapidly increasing pool of blood. The cat was crouching on his chest, worrying at his torn throat.

Sickened, the balcony whirling dizzily around my head, I knelt and tried to pull the beast off. I found it as welded to the throat as if it had become a part of the lifeless body. As I tugged at the silent, busy cat, a hand fell upon my shoulder, tightened on it, half lifted me to my feet. The Eurasian woman, smiling, confronted

"I know no more than you do," he shrugged. In his tone was the contempt of the normal human being for the abnormal. Mrs. Troil walked calmly back into the dining-room and seated herself.

"The dulce will be delayed," she said; and resumed her rather coarse talk. "Pity"—she remarked-" pity that a reversal of that scene was not taking place in my own kitchen, instead of having happened in Hongkong a few years ago!" Troil watched her uneasily during the rest of the meal, which No. 1 boy was so slow about bringing in.

No. 1 boy left the dining-room to fetch our coffee, and we arose from table in order to drink the coffee on the porch. We straggled one by one on to the porch and settled ourselves to wait for the boy. The wait was long. Troil became impatient, and Mrs. Troil sneered at him.

"How can you know, you-Englishman-what is happening in kitchens out here?"

with a taunt. A wave of nausea swept over me. I clung to a post of the balcony.

Inside the kitchen, separated from us by the dead man, Lim Li placidly polished the knives and forks, removing with whiting the egg-stains from the spoons that we had used at breakfast.

"Maskee!" he said to us. "Miao do muchee good. Eye of Heaven chin-chin my, soul of father go top-side now."

Of course I stayed on. I had to stay, in decency, and to help Troil through. The presence of a man of his own kind-a white man-had served to show him what he could not go on standing. He got rid of the woman.

Through the air, as I awoke on the morning after she went away, was a delicious aroma of lemons-of the ambrosial flavoring of the gods. The porch was. beautiful with great bunches of pure white bloom. I mention this fact because it seemed to me, at the time, that the orchid had refused to burst from its dry twig

HERE have been Conventions at Washington, Pourparlers at Paris, Unterredungen at Berlin, Vergaderingen at The Hague, Conferences at London. The world is sick, and the doctors of law and economics gather in consultation. Frankly, they are frightened at the patient's condition, but they can agree neither upon diagnosis nor treatment. The English ascribe the illness to hardening of the arteries of trade, the French sadly attribute the infirmities to the half-healed wounds left by recent conflict, the Germans feel that financial worries have resulted in primary mental deterioration, while the Americans absent-mindedly exercise their recent acquirement in the language of diplomacy by murmuring ça passe, ça passe.

This is an age of specialization; but before it came upon us there was the family doctor, who did not know a great deal, and admitted it, but who, by judicious inquiry regarding the usual habits and occasional peccadilloes of the patient, was often able to hit upon the truth. If we may be permitted to pose as such a practitioner and friend of the family for the moment, we would say that in our opinion the disability of the distinguished sufferer comes rather from hypermegalism accompanied by acute neuralgia. In other words, he has grown too large and too rapidly, and is distressed by growing-pains in consequence. Our technical consultants show intolerable lack of capacity, therefore, if they continue to base their treatments solely on the superficial symptoms produced by minor complications.

These remarks are serious. They herald the firm conviction that neither the political schemes, the economic policies, nor the suggestions for social readjustment, which statesmen debate so con

tinuously and violently, are the most important factors in man's search for comfort and happiness. There is another problem more intrinsically significant, a problem which surrounds, permeates, and links together all the others like a universal ether. This problem might perhaps be called a peace problem; but it is not an after-war reconnoissance between nations, it is the problem of a just peace between our two basic instincts, nutrition and reproduction. Expressed less abstractly, the world is confronted with the task of providing for all the people that can be supported without a bitter struggle, and of guarding against the tendency to overstep these limits. Let this issue be settled, and the paramount obstacle to an orderly civilization will have disappeared.

This is not a problem, moreover, which will solve itself; nor is it a problem to be considered in the fullness of time. Formerly, when the world was spotted with archipelagoes of untracked wilderness, it may not have been a pressing question; to-day its claim for public recognition cannot be lightly cast aside. The truth of this assertion seems to be realized, though perhaps somewhat dimly, even by those publicists who treat the theme with levity and contempt. Their feverishly optimistic exhortations, in and of themselves, show a fear of consequences in the present trend of affairs that is poorly screened by bluster and bravado. While those who study the rapidly rising figures in the census returns and who keep tally on the diminishing reserves of arable land, they certainly do not laugh.

Essentially, our position to-day is this. The world has been explored from pole to pole. Few new treasures remain to dazzle our tired old eyes. The seas are dotted with ships; the lands are meshed with railroads. Our hands, our voices, stretch from continent to continent. Practically speaking, our little terraque

ous globe, which Voltaire called the lunatic asylum of the universe, has become one single extensive country village; and its inhabitants, revelling in the luxuries born of a coal-stored energy, have forgotten that civilization, like an army, travels on its stomach.

We have had a century of industrialization; and in that century we have grown from 850 million to 1,750 million souls. The growth during this period has probably been greater than in any previous age, for continuous increase at the present rate would make a theoretical Adam and Eve contemporary with the great Augustus. And in actual fact, though rising like a tidal wave, population has not really caught up with the increase in food production made possible by mechanical invention. Superficially then, one might well rest content with perfect faith in the roseate prophecies of similar advances in the future which are to bring lasting peace and happiness. Unfortunately the security of ignorance is a perilous thing. When one analyzes the situation he finds that human genius is not doing for the foodsupply just what some of our optimists appear to think.

Science has furnished cheap fertilizers, adequate transportation, and efficient storage, but its direct aid to the plowman has been very small indeed. There is one reason and only one reason why the tide of population could wax so great during the past century. There was a plenteous reserve of new land; and mechanical invention made it possible for a given unit of man-power to cultivate more of this land and to distribute its products more equitably. In other words, the provisions raised on a given area have not increased because of traction plows and steam threshers. Actual yields per acre have gone down. But cheap land has been available, and each toiler has been able to till more of it than he could by the old hand methods.

As the reserves of new land disappear, however, these conditions will have to change. The machine farmer with his extensive methods, his shallow plowing, his incomplete cultivation, must give way to the old time hand farmer. And the shift will mean harder labor, greater costs, and higher prices for the produce. Here is a concrete example. Belgian crop yields

are over twice as high as those in the United States, but the American farmer receives very much more for his labor because individually he tills five times as many acres. Taking wheat as typical, the American grower averages about 390 bushels per man from a yield of 15 bushels per acre, while the Belgian grower averages only 155 bushels per man from a yield of over 30 bushels per acre. This is no mean economic advantage, and the reason for it is obvious. It holds because land here has been plentiful and cheap, and will pass away when land values rise as the inevitable result of a denser population.

Unfortunately it is difficult to accept this situation in agricultural economics at its true value. The past changes in social culture, from roving hunter to toiling farmer, increased the food supply so tremendously that one is disposed to accept the claims of the age of mechanization without an adequate examination. Just such a procedure has made many a man poor; for the last stage of civilization, as far as agriculture is concerned, is a stock promotion swindle with the performance of its legitimate predecessors as the bait. The earlier ventures deserved success, for they paid substantial dividends out of actual earnings. The industrial age has kept our confidence by the common old fraud of paying interest out of capital.

How we have been fooled! Because the human race has been able to double its numbers in three generations, we have been encouraged to believe that Malthusian consequences have been dodged for all time. The truth is just the opposite. Instead of escaping the trap, we have been pulling its jaws together with both hands. With the fingers of the right, we have reached out and plundered all the available virgin soils, thus providing the means for populous towns and cities to spring up in every desolate quarter; with the left, we have handed the surplus spoils to the older centres of civilization, thereby encouraging them to expand beyond the potentialities of their own holdings. The result is that the contingent food reserves have shrunk at double pace, and world saturation of population has been brought within hailing distance.

It was possible to take this course be