If we adopted some neutral, international speech, some Esperanto, then the collective administration of the whole zone on terms of full equality would be feasible. But if only the two languages of the League, French and English, were official, England and France would apparently at least enjoy an unfair advantage; if Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, were added-and why not all the national tongues of the League members?-then chaos would prevail. The simplest problem of international administration, at Tangiers, is proving insoluble for lack of a genuine international foundation. Partition, although less desirable in theory, would seem more practicable.

In such a partition the danger would consist in systematically sacrificing the weak. It would be easy enough to satisfy Germany and Italy at the sole expense of Belgium and Portugal. Indeed, England was toying, and more than toying, with such a notion just before the outbreak of the Great War. England and France would lose nothing; on the contrary, they might collect a commission for their services as honest brokers; or, in the blunt Bismarckian phrase, receive a tip. Proud Britain is not above pocketing such douceurs: her rule in Cyprus has no other origin. Belgium, a nation smaller than Maryland, with two languages and none of her own, should be satisfied with the protection of her vested interests; whilst the future of Portuguese culture is splendidly assured by the existence of Brazil. True enough; but if this were all, the deal would reek of the old Macchiavellian and Frederician cynicism. It might well foreshadow the spoliation of the next weakest; and it would painfully emphasize the lesson: Be strong, and you will be safe; be unscrupulous, and you will

thrive.

If, on the contrary, France and England, of their own accord, were ready to give up something, the moral sacrifice expected of Belgium and Portugal would lose much of its bitterness; from the material point of view, it would be no sacrifice at all. If France and England jointly would match, mile for mile, what Portugal and Belgium had to jettison, a very handsome mass would be created wherewith to satisfy Italy and Germany. Eng

land and France would retain all their possessions outside Africa; and in Africa their shares would still be larger and more valuable than those of their new associates. The reduction in area would not entail a loss without compensation. Not only would chances of war be reduced, but commercial opportunities would actually be increased if, following the precedent of the Conventional Basin of the Congo and of the Mandates, the Open Door were maintained in all exchanged territories. It would then become possible to arrange European possessions into a few simple blocks, easier to administer and to develop than the present scattered colonies. Roughly speaking, we might suggest that England should keep the east coast, from "Cape to Cairo," and France rule the Niger Basin, leaving the rest to Italy and Germany.

It is not yet too late for such a partition. It has repeatedly been proposed for practical, not for idealistic, reasons by good colonialists. The present boundaries are haphazard: trading-posts were created along the coast by the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the French, and the British; then there was, some fifty years ago, a sudden and wild scramble for the hinterland. If some of the coast settlements are centuries old, the inland boundaries are recent and ill-defined. They coincide neither with geographic divisions, ethnographic lines, or natural zones of economic exploitation. Civilization has barely touched the fringe of the Dark Continent; a transfer of nominal allegiance would pass unnoticed with the enormous majority of the natives; the educated Africans for whom such a change would prove a wrench are very few indeed. But the African world is moving fast. In a generation the present frontiers will have begun to solidify. A large number of negroes will have learned European languages; and a readjustment will prove almost impracticable. Then all the artificial lines drawn across Africa, harmless at present because they are almost meaningless, will become very real indeed as sources of constant friction. The simplification of the map would be a boon to the great African powers, even if it should be accompanied by a serious contraction of their holdings. This is our

opportunity to apply the City Planning ideal, not on a municipal, not even on a regional, but on a continental, scale. The bigness of the issue does not increase its difficulty. At Paris the fate of empires was disposed of more easily than we find it possible to-day to adjust the quarrel of Peru and Chile over Tacna and Arica.

Such a solution, we are well aware, is but a makeshift, like all diplomatic solutions. It will not settle fully for Italy or Germany the problem of free access to raw materials; generations would pass before the new Italian or German Empires could become self-supporting economic systems; and it would hardly be desirable that they should become thus self-contained; free trade-or at least fair trade is the solution. It will not settle the problem of surplus population; Africa cannot absorb a million Europeans every year. Unless tropical medicine takes unexpected strides, Africa will not be suitable for European settlement on any large scale. Africa, it should be remembered, is not an empty continent, like Australia and America barely a hundred years ago. It is deserted only where it is desertic. The improvement of living conditions, which is to be hoped for under enlightened rulers, will have as its first consequence a rapid increase in the native population-thus precluding any large influx of the white element. "Africa for the Africans" is not a political cry or a pious wish; it is a necessity which we can bend to our will only in a small degree. Then, such a readjustment can never be final. New claimants may appear; some of the "trustees" may prove unworthy; and the work will have to be done over again, under more difficult circumstances.

The question, therefore, cannot be settled for all time on such lines. But who cares "for all time"? What interests us, in this case, is the next half-century. If this generation, through such

a demonstration of reasonableness, goodwill, and foresight, can manage to disarm the suspicion, the resentment, of two great peoples, we may hope that the next generation will take care of its own problems. The forces making for peace will not be denied. The imperialists are so eager now just because they feel that in fifty years it will be too late. Our sons will refuse to fight for conquest, just as we would refuse to fight for the spread of a religious dogma; patriotism and faith belong to the realm of the spirit, and cannot be served by the sword. Hold war at bay for fifty years, and aggressive nationalism will wane, whilst the spirit of world citizenship will grow. The "common sense" of mankind, now so bluntly denied by H. E. Alfredo Rocco, will make armed conflict between Berlin and London, between Paris and Rome, as unthinkable as between New York and Chicago.

It may seem exquisitely futile for a lone student without the slightest official character to be offering these suggestions to an American public. It is too obvious that neither readers nor writer, even if they were in perfect agreement, could achieve anything; even their elected representatives would be powerless. Yet we must believe in the virtue of honest discussion to clarify thought, and in the power of clear ideas ultimately to influence action. We failed to exert our influence at the right time and to the fullest extent during the Great War, because we had never given foreign affairs any serious thought. Let us think now-on the chance. Thought is oddly contagious, and in the fulness of time it may catch responsible statesmen. The alternative for thought consists in rolling one's eyes, balling one's fists, and rattling one's sabre. It is more picturesque than quiet thinking, but we know whither it leads. The other road, at least, has the merit of being less travelled.

N the northern part of Syria the Lebanon mountains, rising abruptly from the shore of the Mediterranean near Beyrout, and extending far to the northeast, form an almost impassable barrier between Asia Minor and the east. High peaks, snowclad, tower ten thousand feet above the plains. Deep gorges lead up to walls of rock which cannot be surmounted. But traffic between east and west, from Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt into Europe, and from Rome and Greece and Turkey into Palestine, has always had to pass

VOL. LXXXI.-29

these mountains. And as a way over them is impossible, the road has followed the valley of the Dog River or Nahr el Kelb to the coast and around their southern end.

Armies and caravans have used this road from the earliest times. Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans, the Crusaders, and recently English armies have passed over it. As they have made their way along the Cliff, which stands as a barrier to their passage, they have left written records on its face, in the shape of panels deeply carved in the rocks. Some of these are merely accounts of journeys. The majority are records of victories and of triumphs over enemies who have sought to bar the way. From the thir

401

on the Hudson and is shown in the illustration) has a precipitous side toward the Mediterranean, along which terraces and roads have had to be cut on the face of the rock.

The first to cross the mountains was Ramses II. In 1288 B. C. he came up from Egypt with an army of twenty thousand men and, passing through Palestine, invaded Assyria. When he reached the mountains, he found his way barred by the army of the Hittites, a warlike savage people who centuries later opposed the Hebrews, and whose descendants are possibly the Druses of to-day. After a battle in which, by the aid of his chariots, a weapon which they had never seen, he drove the Hittites into the sea, he carved deep in the face of the Cliff, two hundred feet above sea-level, a great panel, eight

or. This is thought by Breasted* to be the first written record of a battle in history. At the top of the panel is seen the figure of Ramses II extending his hand in worship to Amnon Ra, the Theban god. Similar figures are to be seen in Egyptian temples of this period, and at Karnak, Ramses's army is shown in chariots.

Four centuries later, in 880 B. C., another panel was carved in the Cliff. This is in cuneiform characters and was made by Azhur-nair-pal, under whose reign Assyria rose to be the most important kingdom in Asia. This king made a conquest of Syria and Phoenicia, extended his power over all of Mesopotamia, and drew tribute from the adjoining regions, including Palestine. The figure of the king "History of Egypt," page 424.

amean Kingdom, and afterward brought Babylon under the dominion of Assyria, placed a large tablet on the Cliff.

In the next century Tiglath-Pileser III (745 B. C.) had a panel cut to record his conquests. He was a man of executive capacity and broad vision. He was the founder of the Second Assyrian Empire, uniting all of the parts of western Asia under his rule. He held the empire together by the aid of a standing army and an elaborate civil service a novel experiment in 745 B. C. He subdued Syria, Media, and Babylonia, and established his residence at Nineveh. He devised an effective system of finance, which was continued later in the Persian Empire. He invaded Palestine and defeated Azariah, the King of Judea, and exacted tribute from the Hebrews for years. (II

don (680 B. C.), not only held Syria but also invaded and conquered Egypt, driving out the Nubian King Tirhaka, and on his return he too added a panel to the mountain of history adjacent to that of Ramses, as a proof of his equality with the great Pharaoh and of his victory over the Egyptians. The king is shown with the curly beard and Kidives cap characteristic of the period, and is dressed in a long robe. In his left hand he grasps a sceptre held against his body. His right hand is held out as if offering something -possibly a sacrifice to the gods-as this posture is one common in Assyrian figures. As the conquest of Egypt was accomplished in 670 B. C., that is about the date of this tablet. (Shown on page 402 with that of Ramses.)

Thus five Assyrian kings left their