EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



part of the cosmic order of things 

 which we have no power to alter." 



Whether Mr. Kidd recognizes the 

 odious significance of his captivating 

 speculation or not, it is certainly a 

 plea and an apology for slavery and 

 political despotism in the tropics. 

 Most welcome will it be to all those 

 nations and people of easy conscience 

 and measureless greed that now hold 

 in bondage of greater or less inten- 

 sity millions of the inhabitants of 

 that rich and splendid region. But 

 there is reason to believe that it must 

 be relegated to the limbo of a kindred 

 and popular superstition. Within 

 the past year much has been said 

 about the genius of the Anglo-Saxon 

 for freedom and the ethnic incapa- 

 city of the Latins for that boon of 

 civilization. Even so great a scholar 

 as Guizot encourages this extraordi- 

 nary theory. Again and again does 

 he point out in his History of Civili- 

 zation how the spirit of freedom may 

 be traced to the Teutonic hordes that 

 swarmed the forests of Germany. 

 He does so despite the overwhelming 

 evidence against him to be found in 

 his own pages even. In apology for 

 his misinterpretation of social phe- 

 nomena there can be urged his igno- 

 rance of the law of evolution and of 

 the hardly less important law of the 

 militant origin of despotism and the 

 pacific origin of freedom. No such 

 apology can, however, be made in be- 

 half of Mr. Kidd, or of any other 

 apostle of imperialism. Not only 

 have they at command all the gen- 

 eralizations of social science, but all 

 the facts upon which those gener- 

 alizations are based, to prove that 

 neither climate nor race is a limita- 

 tion upon freedom. 



If climate determined the charac- 

 ter of the political institutions of a 

 people, many questions would be sug- 

 gested at once that would be beyond 

 solution. Why, for instance, should 

 a certain freedom have existed in 

 Athens, and the most intolerable des- 

 potism in Sparta? Again, why 



should there be despotism in Russia 

 and Germany as well as in Morocco 

 and Egypt? Another series of ques- 

 tions equally perplexing can be 

 raised. Why should there be more 

 freedom in England to-day than 

 six hundred or even one hundred 

 years ago? The climate has not 

 changed in the interval. Why 

 should the institutions of Spain in 

 the thirteenth century have been 

 more liberal than in the seven- 

 teenth? Why was it that the free- 

 dom that existed in Germany before 

 the Thirty Years' War had virtually 

 ceased to exist at the Peace of West- 

 phalia? Here also the climate had 

 not changed. Why, finally, was there 

 a reaction toward despotism in 

 France after the French Revolution, 

 in Germany after the disturbances 

 of 1848, in England after the Cri- 

 mean War, and in the United States 

 after the rebellion? The only satis- 

 factory answer to these questions is 

 to be found in the fact that militant 

 activities always lead to despotism, 

 and pacific activities always to free- 

 dom. When people get into war, the 

 central power must exercise all the 

 authority over life and property es- 

 sential to success in battle. The im- 

 pulse thus given to despotism spreads 

 to every part of the social fabric. 

 When people are devoted to the pur- 

 suits of peace, the forces that make 

 for freedom transform their ideas, 

 feelings, morals, and institutions, 

 political, industrial, and social. 



Whether despotism exists, as Mr. 

 Kidd and his followers assume, 

 among all the indigenous populations 

 of the tropics, only a careful inves- 

 tigation of the subject would permit 

 one to say. But that it must, as they 

 contend, always exist there, none of 

 the laws of social evolution gives the 

 slightest warrant. Wherever it does 

 exist, it had the same origin that it 

 had in England, and in obedience to 

 the same forces of peace and indus- 

 try that operated against it in that 

 country, it must pass away. The 



