rs
ago. Above all other things in the Philippines we have proved, as we
have shown at Panama, that a tropical climate need not be an unhealthful
one. We have banished from Manila cholera, yellow fever and bubonic
plague--three pests that once made it dreaded in the Orient. This, with
an ample water supply, is an achievement worthy of pride, when one
contrasts it with the unsanitary sewerage system of Hongkong and
Singapore.

The small part of the great Chinese Empire which I was able to see gave
me a vivid impression of the activity and enthusiasm of the people in
spreading the new Republican doctrines. The way old things have been put
aside and the new customs adopted seems almost like a miracle. Fancy a
whole people discarding their time-honored methods of examination for
the civil service, along with their queues, their caps and their shoes.
All the authorities have predicted that China would be centuries in
showing the same changes which the Japanese have made in a single
generation; but recent events go far to prove that Japan will be
outstripped in the race for progress by its slow-going neighbor. What
profoundly impresses any visitor to China is the stamina and the
working capacity of the common people. Tireless laborers these Chinese
are, whether they work for themselves or the European. What they will be
able to accomplish with labor-saving machinery no one can predict.
Certainly should they accept modern methods of work, with the same
enthusiasm that they have adopted new methods of government, the markets
of the world will be upset by the product of these four hundred million.
China is to-day in transformation--fluctuant, far-reaching, limited only
by the capacity of a singularly excitable people to absorb new ideas.

In India great is the contrast to China and Japan. Here is an old
civilization, founded on caste: here are many peoples but all joined to
the worship of a system that says the son must follow in the footsteps
of the father; that one cannot break bread with a stranger of another
caste lest he and his tribe be defiled. Nothing more hideous was ever
conceived than this Indian caste system, yet it has held its own against
the force of foreign learning and probably will continue to fetter the
development of the natives of India for centuries to come. Some simple
reforms the English have secured, like the abolition of suttee and the
improved condition of the child widows; but their influence on the g