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the other day, and leave the reader to judge if they are not worth this passing record.

"I have so many tiny children sent to me as children of school age," said the younger teacher (who is the principal of a large school in the crowded tenement part of the city), "and I am often very much perplexed to know whether they are really under five or not. You know those half-fed children often look younger than they are." "Yes, I have been through all that," said the other, sympathetically, "but now I look at their teeth." The Spectator gasped, but she went on in the most matter-of-fact way. "If the teeth are a little loose, or if they have lost one or two, that child is probably five or over. If they are all there, and all firm, the child is only three or four. It is really a very fair test. Sometimes the children are mere babies, evidently. Then I say, ' Go home and play for a whole year, my child, and then come back.' They go off delighted-to play for a year, that is fine! But the mothers are not so

pleased, you may imagine." "No, indeed!" said the other. "They are glad to get them off their hands and into school. The Italian mothers are especially anxious. Sometimes the little Italian applicants, evidently not over three, keep reiterating like parrots, 'Me five!' 'Me five!' till I tell them to go home and ask their mothers. If they come back still repeating Me five!' then I send for the mothers, and tell them they must make an affidavit of the child's age, and that they will be responsible to the law if they do not tell the truth. That usually settles it; if the child is really five, they are willing to swear to it; but if not, they are afraid of the very idea of the law."

"Do you not have trouble with so many nationalities?" the Spectator asked, hoping to hear something still more interesting. "Oh, we hang the flag over the school platform," was the answer, “and have the regular exercise of saluting it, and the children become very patriotic indeed. They will not own, in most cases, that they are not Americans." "Yes," said the other, "I often ask, Will the German children in the room stand up?' The Germans are more wedded to their Fatherland, apparently, than other immigrants, for a few-though not by any means halfof them usually rise to this invitation.

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let the Italian children stand' generally brings

no response at all, though the school is crowded with them in my district. But when I end up by saying, 'Will the American children stand up?' the whole school rises joyfully."

in ours.

"Have you many French children ?" said the Spectator, knowing the pride of the French in la patrie. "No; very few. Still, we have some; indeed, we have children of every nationality under the sun, I think, from the Hungarian and Syrian to the African. It is wonderful how soon the foreign children learn the language of their adopted country. Even when the parents cannot speak a word of English, and have only been a little while in America, the children use their own language as little as possible, and seem to delight But they are not so bright—not nearly so bright—as American children. Any teacher who has tried her hand on both kinds of public-school material will tell you that." "Yet the American stock, almost everywhere, is a mixed stock," said the Spectator. "Yes," said the elder teacher, thoughtfully, "but a mixture of the best, the hardiest, and the strongest races, up to this last half-centuryand the best element from each race, too. The Puritans and the Huguenots and the Covenanters, and the sturdy Germans and Swedes, were really the pick of the world for colonists. Now, my little scholars are from the lower classes of the weaker nations, and most of our immigration for years has been in that line. But still," she added, with courageous patriotism, "they will be better citizens, and better men and women, as Americans than they would have been if they had stayed at home and grown up in Hungary or Italy or Syria; I am sure of that. And I feel quite content to spend my days in teaching them their opportunities for America is the open door of opportunity to them."

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Major-General John R. Brooke

HILE the formal order for the military government of Cuba only directs General Brooke to exercise the authority of Military Governor of the island, it is pretty well understood that equally important civil functions will be his, and that in effect his powers will not differ greatly from those of a Governor-General. To him will be responsible the Governors of Provincesfor instance, General Wood in Santiago Province and General Lee in Havana Province-while in the case of the city of Havana, its Governor, General Ludlow, will also report directly to General Brooke. Practically the discretion granted to him is almost unlimited under the general instructions for governing Cuba which may be issued by the President and under the legislation of Congress. General Brooke has been a soldier for thirty-seven years. In the Civil War he rose rapidly until at the end of the war he was a Major-General of Volunteers. In the regular army very few officers have seen such varied and constant service in the Far West and South, while his fine management of the Porto Rican campaign under General Miles has added distinctly to his military reputation. The new Governor of Cuba is not quite sixty years old, is of massive build, and over six feet in height. In conduct and courage he is every inch a soldier. He is trusted by his fellow-officers, popular in the army, and has been well described as "a man built for big undertakings."

A Model American Military Administrator

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By Theodore Roosevelt

HAT I am about to write concerning the great service rendered, not only to Cuba, but to America, by Brigadier-General Leonard Wood, now Military Governor of Santiago, is written very much less as a tribute to him than for the sake of pointing out what an object-lesson he has given the people of the United States in the matter of administering those tropic lands in which we have grown to have so great an interest. The most extreme expansionist will admit that the proper administration of our newly acquired tropical dependencies is absolutely essential if our policy of expansion is not to collapse; on the other hand, at least the most intelligent among the anti-imperialists will admit that we have certain duties which must be performed as long as we stay in the tropic lands.

Of course there are some anti-expansionists whose opposition to expansion takes the form of opposition to American interests; and with these gentry there is no use dealing at all. Whether from credulity, from timidity, or from sheer lack of patriotism, their attitude during the war was as profoundly un-American as was that of the "Copperheads" in 1861. Starting from the position of desiring to avoid war even when it had become inevitable if our National honor was to be preserved, they readily passed into a frame of mind which made them really chagrined at every American triumph, while they showed very poorly concealed satisfaction over every American shortcoming; and now they permit their hostility to the principle of expansion to lead them into persistent effort to misrepresent what is being done in the islands and parts of islands which we have actually conquered.

But these men are in a very small minority. I think most Americans realize that facts must be faced, and that for the present, and in the immediate future, we shall have, whether we wish it or not, to provide a working government, not only for Hawaii and Porto Rico, but for Cuba and the Philippines. We may not wish the Philippines, and may regret that circumstances have forced us to

take them; but we have taken them, and stay there we must for the time beingwhether this temporary stay paves the way for permanent occupation, or whether it is to last only until some more satisfactory arrangement, whether by native rule or otherwise, takes its place. Discussion of theories will not avail much; we have a bit of very practical work to be done, and done it must be, somehow. I am certain that if the Cubans show themselves entirely fit to establish and carry on a free and orderly government, the great mass of my fellow-citizens will gladly permit them to decide themselves as to the destiny of Cuba, and will allow them to be independent if they so desire. I am also certain that Americans would take much this position in regard to the Philippines were the conditions such as to justify it. But I am also certain that our people will neither permit the islands again to fall into the clutches of Spain or of some Power of Continental Europe which would have interfered to our harm in the last war if it had dared to, nor yet permit them to sink into a condition of squalid and savage anarchy.

The policy of shirking our responsibilities cannot be adopted. To refuse to attempt to secure good government in the new territories acquired last summer would simply mean that we were weaklings, not worthy to stand among the great races of the world. Such a policy would itself be a failure; and if we follow any other policy we can do no worse than fail; so it may be taken for granted that we are going to try the experiment. All that remains is to see that we try it under conditions which give us most chances of success; that is, which render it most likely that we shall give good government to the conquered provinces, and therefore add to the honor and renown of the American name no less than to the material well-being of our people at home and abroad. In these tropical and far-off lands good government has got to be secured mainly, not from Washington, but from the men sent to administer the provinces. It is, of course, essential that Congress should ulti

mately provide a good scheme of government for the colonies-or rather for each colony, as there will have to be wide variation in the methods applied-but even this scheme can be worked out only by the aid and advice of the men who have had actual experience in the wholly new work to which Americans are now called; and until we are able to get such advice any scheme must be of the most tentative character. What is really essential is to have first-class men chosen to administer these provinces, and then to give these men the widest possible latitude as to means and methods for solving the exceedingly difficult problems set before them. Most fortunately, we have in General Wood the exact type of man whom we need; and we have in his work for the past four months an exact illustration of how the work should be done.

The great importance of the personal element in this work makes it necessary for me to dwell upon General Wood's qualifications as I should not otherwise do. The successful administrator of a tropic colony must ordinarily be a man of boundless energy and endurance; and there were probably very few men in the army at Santiago, whether among the officers or in the ranks, who could match General Wood in either respect. No soldier could outwalk him, could live with more indifference on hard and scanty fare, could endure hardship better, or do better without sleep; no officer ever showed more ceaseless energy in providing for his soldiers, in reconnoitering, in overseeing personally all the countless details of life in camp, in patrolling the trenches at night, in seeing by personal inspection that the outposts were doing their duty, in attending personally to all the thousand and one things to which a commander should attend, and to which only those commanders of marked and exceptional mental and bodily vigor are able to attend.

General Wood was a Cape Cod boy; and to this day there are few amusements for which he cares more than himself to sail a small boat off the New England coast, especially in rough weather. He went through the Harvard Medical School in 1881-82, and began to practice in Boston; but his was one of those natures which, especially when young, frets for adventure and for those hard and dangerous kinds of work where peril blocks the path to a greater reward than is offered by more peaceful occupations. A year after leaving college he joined the army as a contract surgeon, and almost immediately began

his service under General Miles in the Southwestern Territories. These were then harried by the terrible Apaches; and the army was en. tering on the final campaigns for the overthrow of Geronimo and his fellow-renegades. No one who has not lived in the West can appreciate the incredible, the extraordinary fatigue and hardship attendant upon these campaigns. There was not much fighting, but what there was, was of an exceedingly dangerous type; and the severity of the marches through the waterless mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, and the northern regions of Old Mexico (whither the Apache bands finally retreated) were such that only men of iron could stand them. But the young contract doctor, tall, broad-chested, with his light-yellow hair and blue eyes, soon showed the stuff of which he was made. Hardly any of the whites, whether soldiers or frontiersmen, could last with him; and the friendly Indian trailers themselves could not wear him down. In such campaigns it soon becomes essential to push forward the one actually fitted for command, whatever his accidental position may be; and Wood, although only a contract surgeon, finished his career against the Apaches by serving as commanding officer of certain of the detachments sent out to perform peculiarly arduous and dangerous duty; and he did his work so well and showed such conspicuous gallantry that he won that most coveted of military distinctions, the medal of honor. On expeditions of this kind, where the work is so exhausting as to call for the last ounce of reserve strength and courage in the men, only a very peculiar and high type of officer can succeed. Wood, however, never called upon his men to do anything that he himself did not do. They ran no risk that he did not run; they endured no hardship which he did not endure intolerable fatigue, intolerable thirst, never-satisfied hunger, and the strain of unending watchfulness against the most cruel and dangerous of foes-through all this Wood led his men until the final hour of signal success. When he ended the campaigns, he had won the high regard of his superior officers, not merely for courage and endurance, but for judgment and entire trustworthiness. A young man who is high of heart, clean of life, incapable of a mean or ungenerous action, and burning with the desire to honorably distinguish himself, needs only the opportunity in order to do good work for his country.

This opportunity came to Wood with the

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we were fond of the same sports; and, last, but not least, being men with families, we liked, where possible, to enjoy these sports in company with our small children. We therefore saw very much of each other; and we had made our plans long in advance as to what we should do if war with Spain broke out; accordingly, he went as Colonel, and I as Lieutenant-Colonel, of the Rough Riders. How well he commanded his regiment is fresh in the minds of every one.

him in good stead. I was frequently in Santiago after the surrender, and I never saw Wood when he was not engaged on some one of his multitudinous duties. He was personally inspecting the hospitals; he was personally superintending the cleaning of the streets; he was personally hearing the most important of the countless complaints made by Cubans against Spaniards, Spaniards against Cubans, and by both against Americans; he was personally engaged in working

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