Within my memory, exchange from one Mexican city to another and not necessarily far-was often up to ten per cent., so arduous and dangerous were the roads. The first national bank in Mexico was established in 1882. For more than nine tenths of the century the barbarous interstate and intertown taxes had maintained their feudal throttling of progress, though for thirty years the commonest and fiercest slogan of every campaign had been, "Down with the Alcabalas!" It was only in 1896 that the most impetuous of Mexican soldiers and most patient of Mexican statesmen dared repeal them. I saw the Alcabalas die, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. A longer article than this would be required to analyse what the abolition of this immemorial trade gag-law meant for commerce, manufacture, and even communication and national unity.

The whole financiering of Mexico in the quarter-century has been, perhaps, without parallel. Credit the nation had none. Poverty, insecurity, and repudiation had done their perfect work. Every year the Government faced a deficit. Taxes were grievous, and nothing to show for them. In 1885, the deficit was $35,000,000. In 1896, a surplus came along, and to stay. Diaz had at once reduced taxes and begun unheard-of public improvements. Peculation was stopped. Accounts began to be kept exactly. I know no other country in America where the whole public service is so free from "politics and spoils as in Mexico to-day. Our own country is not in the comparison at all. Mexican credit is now at par. In his first decade Diaz raised it from ninth to second place among the Spanish-American nations. The national debt is about $203,000,000.

There was education in the colonial days,— and admirable in its ecclesiastical sort. But the Mexican public

school system is due to Diaz.

There are now over 7500

free public schools in Mexico, or one to every 1600

population. There is not in the republic a village of 100 Indians which has not this benefit. And there are over 2000 private and religious schools besides, and liberal provision of technical, normal, professional, and other higher institutions. The higher education is as free to women as to men. Compulsory education began in 1896. The National Library of 200,000 volumes (ravished from the Church) was opened in 1884. There are now 102 other public libraries in the country.

Before Diaz, Mexico had one fit harbour- the second best in the world, but cut off by one hundred leagues of dangerous and difficult mule-path. Now Vera Cruz has been made an adequate harbour by an outlay of $20,000,000, and Tampico as expensively added to the list, while Acapulco, the only great natural harbour in 5000 miles of Pacific coast, is now being fetched into reach by one of the Diaz railroads.

In its first half-century, the republic did not have one public work of even half the calibre to give it place in a compend of this span; not a public building, not a reform in financial, social, commercial, educational, administrative, municipal, or other reform in any serious category. Its one large-though mixed-achievement had been the unhorsing of the Church. To-day there are over six hundred Protestant congregations in Mexico, striving to convert not pagans, but Christians, and, in fact, harvesting their sort of proselytes. But Mexico does not object, our contributors to "missions" do not, and no more do I. Yet the matter is significant. Such tolerance of an impertinence no other nation ever comparably endured is a long way from the Inquisition which martyred Hidalgo. So is it that a wholly Catholic nation does not permit a priest to walk the street in his robes, exiles the Sisters of Charity, suppresses religious processions, and forbids prayer as part of the programme of any national celebration.

Before Diaz, the rich and ancient capital had spent two and a half centuries and ten millions in vain attempts to relieve its recurrent floods. Sewerage was unknown. To-day the valley is drained and sewered by a system nowhere surpassed. Electric lighting, transit, and powertransmission are in vogue. Law and order are of a Public education and in

proportion we may well envy. dividual scholarship have no call to blush in a fair comparison with any land. Business is prosperous, almost without individual exceptions. Factories of all

sorts and some of the costliest and finest factories in the world-have sprung up by the thousand. The comminuted bones of a national spirit are knit as they never were before. Nowadays, it is not Mexico, but we, who are "fooled" when we omit her from the category of the nations that count. She does count; she will count far more. She has mastered anarchy, she has triumphed even over free silver. She is busily engaged in practising one of the first gospels and mottoes of the American colonies, "Mind Your Own Business,"-and is making a magnificent success at it. It is a curious problem in the philosophies of history, what shall be the outcome of a nation which, instead of being born rugged and growing old and lazy, was born old and in the last quarter-century has come into the heritage of sturdy youth. For it is as a young nation, with muscles still growing, that we must think of new Old Mexico.

THE CENTURY'S CHANGES IN CHINA AND

AT

JAPAN

By W. E. GRIFFIS

T the opening of the nineteenth century, Orientals and Occidentals were profoundly ignorant, indeed almost unconscious, of each other. Each wrote "the history of the world," leaving out one half of it. Japan, Korea, and Siam were hermit nations, and fiercely inhospitable. China, surrounded on all sides by deserts, plateaus, or jungles, was accessible only at Canton. The idea prevailed in the West that the "Celestial" Empire was a land of mystery and of sages, and that her satellite nations were hopelessly recluse. In American atlases a map of one of our own States or subdivisions occupied a whole page, the other countries or continents in the world getting a fraction, while at the end of the book all Asia figured in puny proportions. One could cover China. with a teacup, the whole Empire with a small saucer, Japan with a caterpillar, and Korea with a mouse's ear. A Chinese atlas, none the less successful in distorting reality, gave a page to a province, and then dumped all the rest of the world on the last sheet. In Chinese view, all the civilised people dwelt in the Middle Flowery Kingdom. Those outside were "barbarians," their countries being but tassels upon the imperial robe.

Few in the West cared to know who was Emperor of China or Tycoon of Japan,-the Mikado being then too ethereal and shadowy even to be thought of. To the far Oriental, the politics of Europe were lunar; to the

European, those of China were subterranean. Except to get its trade and taels, who cared for the land of Confucius? Popularly, Chinese Asia was supposed to be inhabited entirely by "Mongolians," all dressing and looking alike, and eating the same food, in which rats figured as the chief dainty. The illustrations in our textbooks and even authentic books of travel, as they emerged from the average artist and wood-engraver, showed woful monotony of human features in man and in landscape. If Chinese letters or figures were introduced, they were almost sure to be upside down. On the other hand, it cut directly across the grain and growth of age-long tradition in China to imagine the presence of aliens on the soil for any purpose except to bring tribute. The British envoy, Lord McCartney, sailed up the Pei-ho River to the capital, thinking he was being honoured with all possibie graciousness of imperial favour. He little suspected, until enlightened, that the great staring characters on the sides of his boats and heaped-up presents read," Barbarian tribute-bearers coming to do homage to his Majesty, the Chinese Emperor."

Broadly speaking, all Chinese Asia, embracing one third of the population of the globe, had one common stock of ideas. In their forms of expression, in art, literature, language, religion, laws, government, and social customs, the dominant note is that of impersonality. "God" or " Heaven" represents bundles of laws or principles. The idea of man as individual, self-conscious, and free is extremely feeble. Tradition and precedent are holy. The ancients had all the wisdom. Originality is a deadly sin. Individuality and personality are to be suppressed. The glory and dignity of man as man are next to unknown. The family, clan, or horde is everything. The Soul of the Far East," in the Western view, is no soul at all-hardly better than its Japanese symbol, a crystal ball. Impermanence is

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