pine Islands to maintain foreign relations and stable self-government, it is useless to expect to receive the help of Europe in neutralizing them after withdrawing from them ourselves.

Neutralization, however, is not incompatible with continued sovereignty over the Islands, and we have only to consider what changes in our relations might occur if they were placed in permanent neutrality. We know that we may not levy soldiers there, nor cede a portion of territory, nor receive articles of a contraband nature from the Islands in time of war. But we may build fortifications to protect their perpetual neutrality, and keep an adequate force of troops there to preserve order, taxing the Islands, instead of ourselves, for the cost of their erection, equipment, and maintenance. We have precedents in the cases of Switzerland and Belgium, where fortresses have been retained, and new ones erected, solely to insure the complete neutrality of the respective States. Fortifications for the protection of neutralized lands and waterways are historically possible and, where the duty of protecting the neutrality of important harbors is concerned, assume the character of national obligations as well, falling, in the absence of agreement, upon the sovereign power.

The point of greatest objection and one where, if anywhere, the proposal for the neutralization of the Philippines would fail, is with the tariff. It would be necessary to establish free trade in the Islands, as there could be no exclusive tariff advantages between the United States and its neutralized possessions. We cannot neutralize the Philippine Islands and then expect to retain for ourselves the possibility of driving out all foreign trade and confining the commerce of the Islands to the United States. It is doubtful, indeed, whether we might do that with

the Islands to-day, in the present state of world-relationships, and not incur the hate or hostility of the civilized world. Yet, even under free trade in the Islands, we would be giving up nothing from which we are now deriving any appreciable benefit. On the contrary, we might profit by the changed conditions, having laid a tariff on many articles imported from the Philippines, including their principal exports, while other nations, notably England with her free-trade provisions, have not, retaining meanwhile our advantage in comparison with Europe in matters of proximity and freight charges.

That we should be the chief gainers, together with all the world, by such an act, is apparent when we consider that it would make the Pacific in truth a peaceful sea, while reducing our navy at once to its proper spheres of home protection and the assurance of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine in North and South America. It might not mean a reduction in the Navy, which is not the question at issue; but it would at least do away with that anomalous situation by which we maintain at great expense in far-away islands a garrison and a fleet which, we are perfectly aware, are inadequate to defend them, in order to retain territories which, as we are assured by our military authorities, we would not attempt to defend but would abandon in time of war. What effect does our military occupancy have, other than to bring us into a position to lose by capture or destruction some of our battleships and cruisers and a portion of our regular army?

Neutralization offers greater protection to the Philippine Islands than this nation alone can give; and with the expense of that protection shifted to the Islands, and its excess borne in common by all the guaranteeing Powers, we should have reached a most practical solution of our difficult question.

Again, if our exclusive possession of the Islands is doing us no visible good, but may serve later to irritate China by the presence of an armed Power in close geographical proximity to her own shores, why not deal with them some other way? Let us neutralize them and, cutting off an expense of nearly fifty millions a year, continue our relations with our possessions in commercial and educational ways. 'Instead of establishing,' as the report of the Committee says, 'a protectorate, which would make this country individually responsible for the defense of the islands, a responsibility which will entail very considerable burdens and the possibility of trouble with foreign powers, it seems wiser to accomplish the same result by treaty with the other powers, which would make the islands neutral territory and secure from foreign invasion.' We have done our duty toward the Islands and can now in no better way express the American purpose which we have always held toward them than by placing them, under our sovereignty, in permanent neutrality.

If we do this, granting free trade in the Islands, there is no nation that will object. On the contrary, it is probable that the Powers will meet advances in this direction with great cordiality.

They give up nothing, as the Islands are not now open to occupation, and, once neutralized, no one, in the face of the interests of the entire world, would dare to seize them. Under the guarantee of the suggested Powers, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and Spain, there is little danger that the Philippines would fail to enjoy unmolested peace.

The question is greater than one of mere privilege. We have seen that permanent neutrality has developed from its origin as a doubtful favor, applied to individual states, into a valuable resource available, in the interests of peace and commerce, to the colonyholding nations of to-day. There is no loss of honor to a state in accepting neutralization, and no occasion for shame in granting it to colonial possessions. The report of the Committee on Insular Affairs is not unworthy of the people of these United States.

The Philippine Islands once neutralized, a way would be opened to friendly and more stable relationships with the Orient, which could not fail to act as an example to the Powers. This result, in the furtherance of international peace in the East, and also - where its effects would be closely watched — in South America, would be inestimable; it is also possible.

WE first saw Gopal Baba on an early April morning, while the grass and trees of Berhampore Square were still white with dew, sparkling in the yellow radiance of the dawn. Mem-Sahib and I were wending homeward toward our barrack bungalow, from a walk along the high embankment of the Bhagirathi, replenished now by the first melting of Himalayan snows. I have a fancy that, crowned with huge helmets of white sola pith, we looked like peripatetic mushrooms to the brown-skinned, pious Brahmans who, pressing the triple cord between their palms, stood waist-deep in the turbid water, praying their sins away in the sacred tide.

We had started before sunrise, walking down-stream past Ghora-bazaar and the dak-bungalow, under a widespreading silk-cotton tree now draped in bright green leaves, which we had admired in February, month of blossoms, splendidly decked with crimson flowers, like a blazing torch against the green. A little farther down the bund, we had a strange encounter that wonderfully expressed one of the hidden feelings of our hearts. From the boat which had arrived from Calcutta, and lay moored by the embankment, emerged a huge man, evidently no Bengali, nor of any Indian race we knew. Bronzed, with the face of an eagle, he wore a loose, exotic-looking jacket and very wide trousers, and his shaggy head was crowned with a red

fez. He swung along, majestic, masterful, with lordly disdain in every feature, every movement.

'I think he is a Turk,' said MemSahib. 'I like Turks, they are such splendid men!'-a generous concession from a Russian whose kin had fought against them under Khars.

The big, masterful man swung on to meet us with long strides, and, some dozen paces off, seeing that we were watching his oncoming with sympathetic eyes, he stopped short, threw up his hands with magnificent disdain, and in a voice with fine reverberating undertone exclaimed, —

'My God! What a country!' Then he paused a moment, and broke out again, —

'My God! What people!'

Be this your epitaph, O Bengalis! We learned that the big Turk had got stranded in Howrah, and was now making his way up country in search of Sunni coreligionists. We contributed to his wants, and bade him go bravely on, in the name of Allah, merciful and compassionate.

Homeward wending, then, from this encounter, we had turned from the bund toward the square, and were passing the garden of the Collector Sahib's kuti, the only house in the square that rejoiced in an upper story. It was, I think, the general's quarters in the old days before the Mutiny of 1857, when Berhampore was a military

cantonment, with the square for a parade-ground. The generals of those days had made a garden, adorned with flowering shrubs and foliage-plants, where roses panted through the hot season and took heart again after the rains. There was a pyramid of scarlettrumpeted hibiscus that flamed in the forehead of the morning.

As we skirted the Collector's garden, conscious of the growing heat, we saw Martha coming toward us, wheeling little Theo, the Collector Mem-Sahib's dear baby, in her perambulator. Martha was not, as might be supposed, a nursemaid; Martha was a huge, blackbearded Mahometan, one of the Collector Sahib's chaprassis, a dozen of whom, with red button-shaped turbans and big brass plaques of office on their breasts, stood about his throne to do his errands, — whom later I inherited, when the Collector Sahib went off on leave and left me in charge. I once asked the Collector Mem-Sahib why this big, black-whiskered Moslem, who could have led a charge of cavalry, should bear the gentle name of Martha. The lady replied, with her charming smile,

'Oh, don't you see? Because he is careful and busied about many things!'

So Martha, having a big man's love of children, had been deputed, as often before, to wheel little Theo forth to enjoy the morning air while the grass was still white with pearls and festoons of gossamer hung from the date-palms. Theo was beginning to feel the oncoming hot season. She was pale, a pathetic, tiny angel of a child, who should have been running barefoot in English meadows among cuckoo-flowers, gathering the sweet life of spring and the color of the daisy-tips in her cheeks. Martha, in deep-voiced Hindustani, was trying to cheer and entertain her, and Theo courteously tried to be receptive and to show herself enter

tained, but her attention flagged, and the far-away eyes matched rather sadly the little pale cheeks.

So much we saw as we approached: Martha with deep concern in his dark, honest face; Theo rather limp, but winsome as ever. Then Gopal Baba came suddenly upon the scene. I think he had been in the Collector Sahib's garden, and came forth by a wicket-gate in the wall. One could see that he was a Brahman, fine-featured, cinnamonskinned, wearing a white loin-cloth, and with a scarf of white muslin across his shoulders; barefoot and bare-headed, with long hair and a short, curly beard just touched with gray. He was wonderfully lithe, his step swift and springy, his whole bearing full of forceful grace. He walked beside Theo in her baby-carriage, smiling, with wonderfully gentle, luminous eyes, looked into her peaked little face, and laid his brown hand on her little white hand, which rested rather wearily on the wicker rim of the perambulator.

The first thing that struck me was that Martha did not show the least wish to interfere. As a Mahometan, he was suspicious of all Hindus; as an orderly, he had an official's high disdain for all lay folk; as a trusted minion of the Collector Sahib and, even more, of the Collector Mem-Sahib who, indeed, had conferred on him the honored name of the maiden of Bethany, he should have been, and on all occasions was, very alert to guard little Theo from alien approach, be it of man or woman, elephant or sunstroke. Yet he did not check Gopal Baba, or bid him begone for a Hindu vagabond, which, had he done it, would not have surprised me in the least. Indeed, I saw him smiling down at Gopal Baba, and he stopped the baby-carriage, so that the gray barbarian might, if so minded, talk at his ease with the Christian child.

It seemed, however, that Gopal Baba was not so minded. He had laid his brown hand on Theo's white little fingers, and he kept it there, bending down over her, smiling with bright serenity; with joy, not pity, in his eyes. Little Theo, when he first touched her hand, looked up, with a quick, questioning, intuitive, baby glance; and, as her eyes met his, she too began to smile, her little face growing more animated and a tinge of color coming into her cheeks. She looked like her old self of the cold season, and one could see answering reassurance and satisfaction kindling in Martha's eyes.

Gopal Baba, as I have said, had not spoken to the little girl, nor did he now; yet one could see that a very good understanding was established between them, and a sweet serenity filled the dear little baby face. She drew a long breath, sighed happily like a little child awaking from sleep, and then laughed a happy, gentle little laugh, as she looked up at Gopal Baba. With her other hand she began to pat that dark hand of his, which still lay on hers, and in her touch and in her eyes there were caresses.

The whole thing lasted but a moment, and then Gopal Baba raised his serene eyes from the child to the chaprassi; then, straightening himself up, he turned and walked away, with rapid, noiseless steps, like a gentle, benevolent panther.

When I was in cutcherry later in the day, in the huge barrack across the square, I had occasion to see the big and big-hearted Collector Sahib, and I told him of this early morning happening.

'Oh, yes!' he said, with that pleasant laugh of his, which remains one of my best memories of India, 'that was Gopal Baba: quite a crony of Theo's, you know!'

'Who is Gopal Baba?' I asked.

'Oh, a kind of crazy saint!' said the Collector Sahib, smiling. 'I don't quite know where he comes from. I suppose he has always been here; part of the station, you know. You ought to have seen him at work in my garden a week ago. You know the big peepal, the great rubber tree that overhangs the square? Some of the branches had grown too far over the house, and I was afraid of the damp in the rains, especially for Theo. I was talking to Martha about these branches, saying they ought to be cut, when Gopal Baba came up to us, debonair as always. He never seems to want anything. Gopal Baba listened, and heard Martha reply that it would be dangerous work; it would not be easy to get any one to undertake it.

'Gopal Baba smiled and went away; half an hour later he came to the house with a hashua, went quickly up to the roof without saying a word to any one, swung himself into the tree and began to lop off the overhanging branches. The way he skipped from one to another was the most fearless thing I ever saw; he was absolutely birdlike.'

Mem-Sahib and I were forth on another early morning walk, a few days later, this time up the river, and were looking down from the high bund at a quaint little weather-stained temple with twisted pillars, under a manystemmed, shaggy banyan tree, when we descried Gopal Baba sitting on a stone bench before the temple, still as a statue, in happy contemplation. He looked up and smiled. It was, I think, his home.

Thereafter, in the multitudinous occupations of the Civil Station,criminal trials, treasury work, land surveying, assessments, ryots and crops, amusements and festivities, Gopal Baba faded wholly from my memory. It was well into the greater rains before we saw him again.