the West Indian Station for prize-money that with luck meant wealth undreamed. Trade was a great adventure that led to sudden riches and retired opulence, or perhaps to a grave fathoms deep in the blue waters of the Windward Passage. Nor have conditions completely changed in the day of steamships and cables. The Companies of Gentlemen Adventurers trading and fighting in the far corners of the earth have been replaced by less romantic agencies, but something of the old reliance on the back ing of the fleet persists in the policy of modern corporations. Where the Gospel is preached to the heathen and risky investments net far more than six per cent, missionary and trader alike look to the gunboat in the offing. In Nicaragua, in Haiti and Santo Domingo, business interests demand some measure of local security.

Concerning American "dollar imperialism," Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Borah hold widely divergent views. To the secretary of state the guarding of American commerce abroad seems a vital part of our insistence on business probity the world around. Mr. Borah, on the other hand, would subordinate commercial interests to the sacred rights of small nations, even to frequent revolutions at the expense of the American bondholder. What the sturdy young republicanism of America, tinged with the idealism of its own revolutionary struggle, voiced in the notes which John Quincy Adams composed for the dismay of the Holy Alliance, whose political commitments and business interests were endangered by revolution in South America, makes strange reading in contrast to our recent diplomatic correspondence. Have we sacrificed the idealism of our forefathers for a mess of commercial pottage?

If the policy of protecting business interests abroad is at best vague and tentative, even more indefinite is the naval function of showing the flag. It is idle ceremony, perhaps, signifying nothing. Yet while the poor starve in the London slums, hats go up to H. R. H. the Duke of York as the Renown puts out from Portsmouth to carry to the antipodes the White Ensign, symbol of Britain's power. In Batavia, a new destroyer out from

Holland brings encouragement to traders and officials, and, to the native, the warning that the white man still rules. No one can forget the thrill of seeing a cruiser, trim and handy to the helm, or a stately battleship with the Stars and Stripes at the gaff, come treading her way among the junks of Hong Kong harbor, or swing proudly past Seraglio Point, the crew drawn up at quarters, the guard and band paraded aft, and, backing full on both propellers, send her anchors clattering down in foreign waters. Some there may be of the perfect international mind; but in such a moment one wonders if there can live a man so dead of soul as an advocate of complete disarmament or a congressional sponsor for a little navy.

A foolish sentiment, perhaps, the cult of the flag, as a Columbia professor was pleased to call it. Yet forgotten for the instant is the deadly destructiveness of her guns and the sad calamity her misuse might entail. One feels only the natural surge of pride to be kin to those who serve under her flag, and what solemn witness history bears to the power of emotions such as these. For better or worse, man does not live by bread alone.

The central mission of the navy, however, is preparation for war. Obsolete cruisers may land marines to safeguard the property and lives of residents abroad, a foreign squadron may delight the American colony in some distant port, a battleship may transport travelling officialdom with impressive dignity, but these are at best relatively unimportant side-shows. In the main tent, we are always rehearsing for battle. If indeed the age of universal peace has dawned, and no longer need nations fear war or the threat of war, then the time has come to sell off the splendid paraphernalia and pension the last of the faithful actors.

If, however, there exist the remotest possibility of conflict, it is the navy's duty to prepare for victory. That is its raison d'être. If the acceptance of this simple truth be militarism, then militaristic ideas are unavoidable. If, on the other hand, it be true that the possession of a military force ready to achieve victory is the best assurance against a threat which might lead to war, the advocate of adequate

armaments is in truth a pacifist. Adequacy, however, presupposed strength at least equal to the probable enemy and a definite plan of war. Navies to be sufficient unto their allotted tasks must be built with an eye to specific policies envisioning the purpose and extent of war at sea which each nation thinks best in its own interests to seek, be it the defense of limited regions or the greater world mission of victory on the high seas.

Ships are building to-day that embody the modern application of these ideas rooted in the warfare of past centuries; for France, submarines and powerful cruisers of great speed, designed to protect her coasts and keep open the sea lanes to North Africa, to forbid close blockade, and at the same time to harry the enemy's commerce. In England, on the other hand, we see the advent of a superoffensive battleship type, the Rodney and Nelson, carrying their nine sixteen-inch guns all forward, ships that will form the spear head of the British battleline, to win again her historic objective: smashing victory on the blue seas. The very essence of the immortal admiral's signal: "Engage the enemy closer," is indelibly wrought in the design of the ship that bears his name, while the flash and delicacy of seamanship, the gloire de manœuvre of the frigate captains that sailed the last ships of the Bourbon navy, live again in the latest types of the French fleet.

President Coolidge has often expressed the hope that the day of competitive armaments is passing. Yet the very essence of the naval profession is competition. In times of peace we vie with prospective enemies against the day of battle. Competition rules all human activity, be it in the search for what will best alleviate and ennoble life, or be it, alas, in the quest for better weapons of destruction. It is against and in competition with foreign ships that the naval designer must build. And were it possible to disarm by mutual agreement to the last few decrepit cruisers, if honesty and loyalty, or even pity for those who might be called on to man them in action, still inspire the last captain and the last constructor of the vanishing navy list, this remnant of our fleet will be designed and trained to be

at least equal to the last of foreign navies. The existence of war-ships, however few or limited in type, presupposes the possibility of battle, and no more cruel design can be conceived than the ship predestined to perish under the enemy's blows. Such was the sad fate of Cradock and later of his destroyer, Von Spee, vainly to attempt to close an enemy of superior range and speed, and, his own shots falling short, to await certain destruction. The gallant count well knew the helplessness of his armored cruisers against the faster, harder-hitting ships that would hunt him down long ere he could hope to break through eight thousand miles of hostile oceans, and steam in at dawn past the friendly ramparts of Heligoland. "I take these flowers," he said to the enraptured German colony at Valparaiso, gathered to fête his victory over Cradock's luckless squadron. "They are for my funeral." And he sailed next day toward the Falklands-and, let us hope, to those Elysian Fields beyond, where gather the brave sea-fighters of the ages, commanders who, through the welter of blood and passion, have kept untarnished the ideal of military chivalry that runs like a fine gold thread through the gruesome tapestry of war.

And

Ours is a crowded and grasping age, in which opposing fleets, despite the bonds by which the statesman would seek to restrain the naval expert's natural enthusiasm, tend to grow more powerful, ship by ship and gun by gun, following the quickening pace of modern life. many are the hostages we as a nation have given to fortune. Our standard of living is the envy of the world. We have long since announced that the political affairs of the western hemisphere are peculiarly our concern. In forbidding entrance to those from less fortunate lands, who seek only to share our wealth of opportunity, we have used the dangerous formula of race discrimination despite a hint of serious consequences. Yet we demand economic equality in the Orient, and, unbound by military or political alliances, we insist on facing the world from a position of "glorious isolation."

On the ability of our navy to win the next war, if war there must be, rests the integrity of these basic tenets of our for

eign policy. To protect the national greatness which we sincerely believe dependent thereon, that, and that alone, is the central function of the navy.

To accept ability to win the next warand this is the inevitable point of view of the military profession, as the sole criterion of the navy's composition, training, and employment-brings one to the brink of dangerous logic. For just this was the ideal of the German army and navy of 1914, the militarism we fought to destroy, and on whose ruins we hoped to build a new world free from the foreboding of conflict that haunted the foreign office and admiralty during the first decade of the twentieth century. Each year then saw bigger guns, heavier armor, more powerful engines, the multiplication and improvement of flotilla types to carry deadlier torpedoes; patience, genius, loyalty, and devotion, bounded only by wealth of competing nations pledged to the creation of armaments instantly ready for attack. Those were the days of militarism rampant in the vicious circle of threat and counter-threat. The man-made monster bid fair to destroy all that was best in the civilization that gave him birth, and to blot out the beginnings of freedom of thought and action, and the gradual betterment of conditions for those who had so long been but hewers of wood and drawers of water. That other generations might build anew, secure from the menace of war, was the high hope of many a nameless comrade in arms, who gave and gladly gave to a cause that transcended national interests, implicit obedience, youth, and life itself. How can we best keep the faith with them that died, yet hold withal to the soldier's duty, preparation for war?

The Washington Conference was the first tentative and perplexed attempt to solve the problem of competing armaments. Through its work the navies of the world were so reduced that none could hope for easy and immediate victory. If in establishing naval equilibrium at the point chosen no vital national interest was jeopardized, the via media between

the pacifist, who calls for complete and immediate disarmament, and the equally sincere soldier, who prepares for victory, within the limits set by his country's policy, has been found.

It is said that in the German wardrooms before the war they drank to Der Tag. It was a soldier's toast, cruel and cynical, yet gallant almost to bravado, and, like so much German thinking, brutally honest. Must every soldier drink the same toast or be false to his calling? Our eager youth, our manhood is spent in preparation, and yet it is not for us to hope that the day of battle shall come. It is a long tour of duty from ensign to admiral, a life given to the dress rehearsal of war. We labor in the faith that our very readiness will make less likely a threat to those vital interests we hold in trust for our country. That is our justification. But unlike our brothers in civil life, we must not wish for the crowded hour that would be the tremendous realization of a life's work.

We leave Guantanamo Bay to-morrow. I go on deck. Below in the ward-room returning revellers are singing: "And we won't come back to Soubic any more." The winter cruise is nearly over. A gallant fleet indeed, these many vessels in port, the long rows of lights vaguely outlining the power and majesty of the ships we know so well.

Will we come back to the southern drill-grounds year after year, old men in command of other ships as different from these as the Colorado was from Dewey's Olympia? Or, bursting in on a busy life of military make-believe, will it come some day in earnest, and the decks where we have drilled and danced splinter under falling shells whose deadly destructiveness we can only imagine? Will the picture of one's wife, fastened above the desk in his cabin, be blown into eternity, and, down in the plotting-room, will he feel a great blow that has reached the ship's heart, then the gradual heel, with the telephone gone dead, and the lights out?

Shall we be ready then?

I

ARGARET would have known better what to say. I'm sure I wasn't much help to either of them. My talk with Waring this morning only brought out some very unpleasant truths. More unpleasant than the falsehoods he half believed. And as for little Rosa Trenór-I can never think of her as Waring's wife-there was no use in telling her anything. She knew. God, how she knew! You could see it when she crossed to the stairs with that uncertain broken droop, as if her heels were catching in the tiles, and from the way she turned and went down. And it's still here, that knowledge, she left it behind her like a deeper shadow in the corners of the tower, and a veil between me and the long white square that drops to the mountains and the sea.

There is always a veil, as if the dimension between us and beauty were always

peopled with memory, and human shadows were always crossing its depths. It lies between me and those weightless peaks, and that sun, and that sea like a scarlet step to the sky. Margaret has become a part of Altea and this unearthly Spanish coast. And to-morrow I'm going back to New York. But poor little Rosa and young Waring Guiness will have alien shadows of memory to haunt them for a long while, I'm afraid.

If I hadn't been so lonely in Valencia I wouldn't have come. Naturally I was anxious to see Waring's wife; Margaret and I were delighted when we heard he had married. The letter came last spring just before Margaret's illness. She'd always been interested in Waring; the Cynthia Cromartine affair was the beginning. Margaret had helped him through that when all New York was divided between pity and laughter. And the sight of him, walking down the Cathedral aisle with his straw hat crumpled in his hand, and his eyes turning from niche to niche, as if he were measuring the saints, gave me a shock.

"You must come to Altea with me," he said. "I want you to see Rosa. I'm

painting there and I'm going to take Rosa back to New York in a month-the 10th of October. Please!" He took hold of my arm. "There's a castle and marvellous country, and Rosa's parents are great. They love guests and they try to give everything they have away, and they all speak English as well as we do. Come on!" I was terribly lonely and glad to see him, so I went.

They were all that he claimed for them, Don Rigoberto and Doña Hermenegilda and Rosa. There is a quality in castles and titles, sometimes preserved and sometimes lost. In Rosa's family it had been preserved. That night, ten days ago now, when Waring's car strained up the mountain and through the iron gates, and stopped in front of the castle, I felt for a moment the eerie sweep that plain song gives one, heard at dusk when the trees spread black fingers against the sky and the light falls in pointed arches upon the snow. And the feeling didn't greatly diminish when we sat down to dinner, surrounded by crouching sideboards and chairs like thrones, with the candle-light deepening the plates and turning the glasses into smoke. Don Rigoberto had patriarchal eyebrows and Doña Hermenegilda quivered gently when she laughed. And Rosa was almost too young-a firm, graceful thing, as blond and burnt as a stalk of wheat.

In the morning they took me to see the pictures "Spanish Primitives," Waring called them an altar piece by Nicolau and some panels by Lorenzo Zaragoza. At least I think that was what he said. Don Rigoberto didn't know much about them, and Doña Hermenegilda only nodded tranquilly while Waring talked. They were priceless, I was told. People came from afar to see them. And I could understand why. They were very strange in the squat chapel with its narrow windows receding mournfully behind the gray arches-very old and naïve and fragrant, and fashioned laboriously, with the slow cruelty of faith. "There's a lot of nonsense talked about them in New York," Waring said. Then he flushed uncomfortably. "I like the man in purple-the one where the devil is pulling out his tongue," Rosa remarked with satisfaction. Waring put his hand

That afternoon we drove to the coast. There was sunlight such as I've never seen before; the road down the mountain was blinding white, and the peaks had the sharp emotionless gleam of reflections in a glass. The town of Altea dropped below us in a rambling stairway of scarlet and white, then a half-moon of beach ran around the bay and at the tip the rock of Ifach stood up in the sea like a yellow tooth. We were going to Ifach; to visit Don Felipe Baltasar, who had a house on the rock. And when we'd deposited Don Rigoberto and Doña Hermenegilda, Rosa and Waring and I went down to the beach to swim.

I suppose nothing can ever take away one's enjoyment of certain things. Rosa was very lovely, as Waring had said. Her legs were limber and smooth and her body had the soft glow of sand in the sun. She was fixing her cap-a scarlet affair that brought out the amber of her eyes; then she stooped down in half-closing elastic curves, and picked up a shell and skimmed it into the bay. Waring stood there, watching, as if he were holding her to his lips. I'd seen him look that way at a woman before.

My memory went down, glancing from side to side. The last time he'd talked to Margaret and me, that evening in the Sixty-fourth Street house, quite crazy, pacing to and fro like a beast at the end of a stick and declaring no woman could chew him up and then laugh at the pieces; that he had work to do in the world, and that Cynthia Cromartine would destroy any man, she was rotten with knowledge, and hadn't a living thought in her head. Then a few months before in Cynthia's drawing-room, with its crimson curtains and bulbous ivories, and pictures in pointed frames, when Sir Alexander Siddleston had been there and they'd talked about painting, and Rudolf Cromartine had begun making love in his snuffling way to Mrs. Laporte. Cynthia had watched him, terribly amused, and then turned to Sir Alexander and poured out her mixture of Harlem and Shelley. She knew a lot, did Cynthia, and with it all