railroad station or a hastily scribbled post-card to some exuberant advertising agency. Then, stretched before the fire, we lazily survey the world. Our progress is a matter of mere whim. Trains and steamers wait their connections on our convenience; porters are polite and no querulous bore shares our seat. Cars do not jolt and rattle; boats keep a level keel. We go whither we will.

It is a pleasing idiosyncracy of the descriptive folder that it always presents a region at its best. No other place can compare with it for charm and beauty. Rain never falls; the air is always balmy; skies are ever serene. Foliage is of the greenest and brightest; scenery is unsurpassed; hotels are never more comfort-giving. One moves in a world of superlatives where naught can dismay even the gentlest soul. Verily 'tis a pleasant way to wander!

We have yet another sort of domesticated travel. A favorite walk of ours takes us along a spur of railroad tracks-tracks off the main line and crowded with a motley assortment of dilapidated freight cars. Prosaic enough, perhaps, but for us a wealth of suggested travel. The mystery of initials intrigues us mightily and the lilt of a rhythmic phrase fairly ensorcels. How eagerly we scan each sooty hulk! An uncommon set of initials is an event for mild excitement, a hitherto unknown inscription teases us almost beyond control.

Shall the B. and A. take us Berkshireward on the Boston and Albany or on the Bangor and Aroostook to the primeval forests of Maine? Or shall its first cousin, the A. B. and A. carry us lazily through the palmetto decked savannahs of the South? S. P. never fails to conjure yearning visions of the golden Southwest. The Denver and Rio Grande has an adventurous tang: a double lure in its bold combination of Colorado's rocky snow-capped heights with the passionate land of Lasca. The Florida East Coast speaks wistfully of aurilerous days under limpid azure skies; and C. V. of vacation tramps among the piney-sided Green Mountains. The Oregon Short Line smacks heroically of Lewis and Clark and the days of "fiftyfour-forty-or-fight." The Queen and Crescent has a world of poetry and mystic allure in its enigmatic phrase. And who, loving the surf-swept Southeastern shore, could forbear following the sinuous home trail of the A. C. L.?

Walks take us on other vicarious travels. At least four times daily I pass through a little grove of tall gaunt pines, a spot insistently reminiscent of Florida-even of the apotheosized Florida which Winthrop Packard revealed to us. For me there hover in that acre of sandy-floored sparse woodland gentle memories of a warmer and well-loved clime. There is a langorous charm in its air, a promise of bright blue skies un'specked by clouds and of sunny hours, more than a hint of perpetual benediction.

In an afternoon we can roam far afield. A half-hour's tramping brings us to a ravine that is as suggestive of Scotland as was the pine knoll of Florida. One feeds here on brisker memories. There is a hurly-burly of winds to face, and huge ballooning clouds roll up the skies. R. L. S. falls into step with us; Sir Walter sings a rollicking border tune; Burns carols blithesomely of highland lasses. Fragments of Caledonian myth and poetry come to mind. We troll a bar or two of some old ballad-Bonnie Doon or Annie Laurie, perhaps-or murmur a Scotch stanza in broken dialect. After a while we veer to some other favorite and the whole realm of printed song and story opens itself to us.

Here we are, back at books again, after all the best way to see, know and love this earth and all that is herein. Nowhere else can one find the solace, the hope, the cherriness that is spread on the printed page. In justice and in truth we pledge our homage to it.

So, down the world with Marna I shall go, cozily ensconced before our vespertinal ruddy fire, or else afoot in our wonted nearby pathways. What care we that storms are sudden and waters deep, that Tahiti lies across the world, or that tropic sands blister weary feet? The labors and the sorrows of the traveler are not for us. Ours only are his joys and the fruits of his toil.

Political Problems of Hispanic America:

Their Origin and Nature

MARY WILHELMINE WILLIAMS

Goucher College

Like the poor and the needy, the Hispanic-American nations and their troubles are ever present. Today, Mexico is especially before the public eye. A month or so ago it was Panama, and, previous to that, Cuba. And so, for the past century, one country or another to the south of the Rio Grande has, through its action or inaction, roused American attention, often manifested by sharp criticism. When the matter involves the United States, there is invariably the assumption that we are right and our neighbor is wrong; and if Mexico happens to be the country concerned, as unhesitatingly and unthinkingly as a talking doll which has had one of its strings pulled, a certain jingoistic element in the United States raises a cry for intervention. Our attitude towards the countries of the Caribbean is similar, but the aggressiveness is more political and less popular. In these days of a perverted Monroe Doctrine it is a great misfortune for weak nations to be geographic neighbors of the United States.

Only a pessimistic misanthropist would assert, however, that our unneighborly treatment of our neighbors results primarily from a conscious willingness to be unfair.

Rather, it is due to ignorance of causes. "To know all is to forgive all" applies no less to nations than to individuals; and even a slight understanding of the reason for national scars and blemishes should go far towards increasing sympathy and friendliness for the countries to the south of us.

The most serious handicap of Hispanic America has been. political weakness. All of the states built from the wreckage of the Spanish colonial empire have been characterized by unstable and corrupt governments despotic in character. This fault made possible disasters of foreign origin such as the despoliation of Mexico and Colombia by the United States and the present American military occupation of Nicaragua, Santo

Domingo, and Haiti; and it likewise is responsible for the economic, intellectual, and social backwardness which characterize many of the Hispanic-American nations today, and make them objects of scorn in the eyes of the more fortunate. The trouble is partly traceable to a hoary provincialism originating from the geographical diversity of the Iberian Peninsula. Until the changes recently produced by the mechanical revolution, the people of Spain and Portugal were isolated in narrow valleys or coastal plains, or on high plateaus, shut off from communication with one another by almost impassable natural barriers. Political separatism was the inevitable result: the dawn of early modern times disclosed a land occupied by petty rival states, Christian in name, but frequently engaged in bloody struggles with one another, when not united by common hatred in warfare against the Mohammedan powers to the south. And even today Spain still lacks a broad national spirit. It is cleft by linguistic differences, and a fierce sectionalism marks many of the states.

Though Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors labored persistently to create a Spanish nation, the most lasting result of their efforts was a political paralysis: they engendered a suspicion and hatred of autocratic rule, while destroying the nucleus from which might have developed popular selfgovernment. And the Spanish colonies were founded just in time to reap the full evil from this monarchical meddling. Their local government, based upon the two main elements of the Spanish political machinery still retaining power, included the military executive,-represented by officials of various names,who was appointed by the Crown and responsible to it only, and the cabildo, or town council, a self-perpetuating body which defended municipal and colonial interests against the executive. The former was the product of the new, autocratic era; the latter, a survival from pre-Roman days. The two were separated by a wide chasm of mutual antagonism entirely unbridged by any representative body,-such as the House of Burgesses in Virginia or the General Court of the New England colonies, which would have connected up, and helped reconcile, local interests with those of the larger unit. The cortes-an advisory council containing representatives of towns, nobles,

and clergy-after having been robbed of its incipient power by the Crown, was permitted to live on in name in some of the Spanish provinces; but not even the reflection of this empty shell found a place in the Indies.

Thus, when the Spanish colonies secured their independence they were even less skilled in the science of self-government than were the British of the twelfth century, before the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John. And the fundamental patriotic ideals which dominated most of the population were municipal and provincial; a broad, national spirit was lacking.

In their own characters the founders of Hispanic America were likewise victims of a perverting history. The eight long centuries of strife between the Cross and the Crescent culminated in 1492 with the conquest of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold, by the Christians. But the soul of Spain was blighted by the struggle. The fanatical religious intolerance which exalted creed above character and encouraged the horrors of the Inquisition was one of the fruits of this dearlybought victory. When independence brought increased opportunities for participation in governmental affairs in the New World, the narrow ecclesiasticism readily expanded into political intolerance; and even today the bitter, unthinking hatred manifested by political factions in some of the countries to the south makes party animosity in the United States seem, by contrast, millennial fraternalization.

Close kin to this political bigotry, but perhaps more directly the offspring of the foolish trappings of chivalry which persisted in Spain despite the sharp satire of Cervantes,-is the touchiness, the hyper-sensitiveness, of the Spanish character which transforms all disappointments and all frustrations of plans into questions of "honor," usually adjustable only by the shedding of blood. This survival of mediaevalism further explains the political disorders which characterize the SpanishAmerican nations: the people do not know how to accept defeat in good spirit, and cheer the victors; they are poor losers, poor sportsmen.

The arrogance of the conqueror and the cruelty of the religious bigot forced the Jews and the Moors of the Iberian Peninsula to become the workers of the nation, while the Chris