I. LIFE IN A PHILIPPINE VILLAGE. The little village or barrio of Mariveles is situated just inside the narrow cape that forms the northern border of the entrance to Manila Bay. The city of Manila lies out of sight, thirty miles to the southeast, but the island of Corregidor lies only seven miles to the south, and the great searchlights at night are quite dazzling when turned directly upon the village.... more...

I. THE NEW ECONOMIC LIFE 1. The Historic Present The knell of a dying order is tolling. Its keynote is despair. Gaunt hunger pulls at the bell-rope, while dazed humanity listens, bewildered and afraid. Uncertainty and a sense of futility have gripped the world. They are manifesting themselves in unrest, disillusionment, the abandonment of ideals, opportunism, and a tragic concentration on the life of... more...

INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK. The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a... more...

{vii} PREFACE "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong," as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton begins one of his books by saying, has half its members in Asia. That Americans should know something about so considerable a portion of our human race is manifestly worth while. And really to know them at all we must know them as they are to-day. Vast changes are in progress, and even as I write... more...

FOREWORD That vast stretch of opal islands; jade continents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; mysterious masses of brown-skinned humanity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and full-hipped women; which we call the Orient, can only be caught by the photographer's art in flash-light pictures. It is like a photograph taken in the night. It cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. It... more...

TO MY SONS. When I began the incidents of yore,Still in my soul's depths treasured, to record,A voice within said: Soon, life's journey o'er,Thy portrait sole remembrance will afford. And, ere the last hour also strikes for thee,Search thou the harvest of the vanished years.Not futile was thy toil, if thou canst seeThat for thy sons fruit from one seed appears. Upon the course of thine... more...

Since the publication of our article on the Brazilian Treaty, we have received several letters from individuals who, agreeing with us entirely in the free-trade view of the question, nevertheless are at variance with us as to the commercial policy which we should pursue towards that country, in order to coerce them into our views regarding slavery. We are glad to feel called upon to express our views... more...

On Two Sides of the Eastern Seas It is three days’ easy journey from Japan to China. It is doubtful whether anywhere in the world another journey of the same length brings with it such a complete change of political temper and belief. Certainly it is greater than the alteration perceived in journeying directly from San Francisco to Shanghai. The difference is not one in customs and modes of life;... more...

INTRODUCTION. It may, I fear, be taken as a truism that “the man in the street” (collectively, the “general public”) knows little and cares less for what is called physical science. Now and again when something remarkable happens, such as a great thunderstorm, or an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, or a brilliant comet, or a total eclipse, something in fact which has become the talk of the... more...

CHAPTER I EVENTS PRIOR TO, AND INCLUDING, FIRST AFGHAN WAR OF 1839-41 Proposed Invasion of India by Napoleon I.—Mission of Burnes to Cabul—Its Failure—Hostility of Russia and Persia—First Afghan War, 1839-41—Its Vicissitudes and Collapse. In considering the important and somewhat intricate subject of policy on the North-Western frontier of our Indian Empire it will be desirable, in the first... more...