ica are fortunate in being on terms of complete international amity,
but none the less has the conquest of the Philippines by the United
States profoundly modified the strategical conditions as they existed in
the Pacific when the islands belonged to a weak naval power like Spain.

Hong Kong's population and traffic double every ten years, and no harbor
has a greater tonnage. Were Hong Kong a port of origin, instead of a
port of call, its commercial importance would be greater than that of
London. A few years ago the British Government induced China to lease a
slice of the mainland of goodly dimensions, to accommodate Hong Kong's
swelling trade. There, a mile and a half across the harbor, to-day stand
miles of modern docks and warehouses, and shipyards and engine-building
works, that would do credit to Tyne or Clyde. This addition to Hong Kong
is called Kowloon, and it has residential districts that range well into
the hinterland.

Hong Kong's streets are among the most interesting in the great East,
for they strike the key of true cosmopolitanism. Along them 'rickshaws
pass in endless procession, electric cars roar, and sedan-chairs swing.
The chair borne by four bearers provides the acme of transportation in
fine weather. Eighty per cent, of Hong Kong's people are Chinese, and to
this multitude the human contributions of Europe and America form
necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and
taipan in costumes of the richest of silks, more so than is the poor
coolie in dirty short trousers and jacket, pigtail coiled for
convenience about the head, whose face is none too familiar with soap
and water. In and out of the ever-moving multitude glide the tall,
bright-eyed sons of India, the Sikhs, who are everywhere in the East.
Soldiers in regimentals; jack tars of many nations; policemen, white,
yellow, and black, are included in the picture. Here is the somber
Britisher with confident stride and air of proprietorship, there the
unromantic German slowly but surely capturing Oriental trade. Frenchmen
and Scandinavians rub shoulders along the Queen's Road with the matter
of fact American and the dark man from Italy; whilst now and then a
peculiar gait or unusual costume distinguishes a South American or a son
of the Philippines. Here, in short, within this congested square mile of
the European quarter are daily to be picked representatives of the
world's nations. A study of the crowd is an education