Sidewalk cafés are thronged even on midwinter evenings; every workingman's restaurant in the Argentine has its cancha de bochas, a kind of ground bowling-alley native to rural Italy; there are electric street-cars, and the electric lights outdo our own in size and brilliancy. As the English have the railroads, so do Germans hold most of the concessions for electric light and power, and Mendoza is no exception to this rule. Nothing remains of the old preearthquake town except the ruins of two churches, which are preserved as historical souvenirs and warnings against high buildings, mere masses of bricks standing like monoliths on the summits of walls which seem ever ready to fall down, and on which a bush or a plant has here and there taken root.

Mendoza, like several of the more important cities far distant from the federal capital, enjoys a certain local autonomy, though the prevailing Argentine political party advocates a strongly centralized government more on the type existing in France than that of the United States. There is a one-peso bill, for example, printed by a German firm in Buenos Aires and legal tender only within the province of Mendoza. It would be difficult, probably, for the average American to imagine Denver or Los Angeles with its own local money. Perhaps this condition grew up not only because of the increasing scarcity of currency as one proceeds into the interior of the Argentine, but because the national bills, made in London and more nearly resembling the English banknotes than our own, become more and more ragged, dirty, and illegible the farther they get from Buenos Aires.

There is, of course, much general patriotism in the Argentine, but it is also somewhat forced, like the official computations of the population. In two years time a man may become a citizen and be eligible for any office in the country except the presidency; by

tine soil is an argentino, no matter who his parents are or what their choice may be in the matter. Once having captured their citizens by these and similar aggressive measures, they are varnished with a love of the country which to the skeptical Northern mind would seem easily rubbed off.

In its correct colors the Argentine flag is one of the most effective on earth, but as the blue is seldom made of durable dyes, it is usually more or less faded out, intermingling with the white, and the result is something as sad and uninspiring as a drying dish-cloth. In Mendoza the Spanish red-and-yellow banner was almost as numerous, and far more conspicuous. Among many flags of many nations the Stars and Stripes was the least in evidence, the only one I saw during the day being that in front of a sewing-machine agency.

The railway carried me on up to San Juan, a hundred miles north along the base of the cordillera, and capital of the province of the same name. This, too, is a grape district, as is also the province of La Rioja, still farther north, though parts of the latter are a trifle too warm for the best varieties. Here vineyards still stretched to the horizon in every direction, but the region was like a country without a history, prosperous, happy, and uninteresting. On my re

turn to Buenos Aires I took another branch line down to San Rafael, in the southern part of Mendoza province, likewise noted for its grapes, and the site of the provincial school of viticulture. It was a true frontier town in aspect and point of view, with excellent white wine selling at a trifle more than nothing a liter, its few streets so wide that they seemed fields, and lighted at regular intervals by huge electric globes, which stretched far out into the country, as if, like some of the "boomed" towns of our own prairies, the inhabitants expected any morning to wake up and find that the place had trebled in size and population.

T

O say that the world is today in flux is to state a truism recognized by all thinking persons. The late war not only raised new problems, but also intensified many already existent in pre-war days. One of the greatest problems now pressing for solution is that of India. The problem of India arose before the war. A full decade before 1914 it had drawn world-wide scrutiny, but the war has greatly intensified an already acute situation. Continuance along traditional lines is clearly impossible; momentous changes are at hand. The only question is whether these changes will be effected by a process of orderly evolution or by one of violent revolution.

Which it is to be is still in the lap of the gods. The outlook is confessedly not over-bright. Powerful elements of stubborn reaction and intransigent radicalism alike harden their hearts against peaceful compromise and pin their faith in blind repression or bloody revolt; but, on the other hand, the best minds of both India and England are alive to the peril of the situation and are earnestly seeking an evolutionary solution. Attempts in this direction have already been made, and cool heads on both sides believe that these first steps augur well for the future.

Thus the condition of India, while grave, is not desperate. In the following pages the various factors in the problem will be analyzed and weighed. One thing is certain-the outcome of the Indian crisis will affect all mankind. Not only are the most fundamental interests of the British Empire and Asia at stake, but every quarter of the globe, including America, will feel the result. India is far away. Nevertheless, the spark of Serajevo proved once for all how small and close-knit is the modern world.

Now, first of all, we should remember

one thing: India is not a "country" or a "people" in the ordinary sense of the term. India is nothing short of a miniature world. Sundered from the rest of Asia by the stupendous barrier of the Himalayas, and washed on its other two fronts by the ocean, this huge triangular sub-continent, as large as all Europe except Russia, is inhabited by all sorts and conditions of men. Its teeming population of more than 313000,000 souls (more than one sixth of all the human beings on earth) is made up of several distinct races, speaking a multitude of different languages, holding to many faiths, and occupying widely different stages of civilization. The traditional motivator of Indian life is Brahmanism, more than two thirds of the whole population professing the Hindu faith, albeit sundered among themselves by the rigid walls of caste. Nevertheless, Islam has been powerfully modifying Indian life for more than a thousand years by conquest and conversion, so that to-day there are more than 66,000,000 Mohammedans, or one sixth of the population. This HinduMohammedan division runs like a great chasm athwart India. Only in recent years has Indian "Nationalism" succeeded in bridging the gulf, and the strength of these bridges still remains to be seen.

It is more than 150 years since the English made themselves masters of India. They found the land in a state of anarchy. The Mohammedan Mogul Empire had broken down, and the land had relapsed into a jarring congeries of states, some Moslem, some Hindu, warring fiercely among themselves. Gradually the English forged a system of government unique in the world's history. It was the government of a few hundred highly skilled experts backed by a small professional army ruling a vast agglomeration of subject peoples. It was frankly an absolute paternalism,

has given India profound peace. It has played no favorites, holding the scales even between rival races, creeds, and castes. Lastly, it has made India a real political entity, something which it had never been before. For the first time in its history the entire peninsula was firmly united under one rule the rule of the Pax Britannica.

Until the closing decade of the nineteenth century organized political discontent against the British "Raj" was unknown. Here and there isolated persons uttered half-audible protests, but these voices found no popular echo. The Indian masses, preoccupied with the ever-present problem of getting a living, accepted passively a government no more absolute than its predecessors. Of anything like a self-conscious Indian nationalism there was virtually no trace. The Indian Mutiny was essentially an outbreak of soldiers inflamed by professional grievances.

The first symptom of organized discontent was the formation of the Indian National Congress in the year 1885. The name showed that the very nature of the British Raj covering all India was evoking among India's diverse elements a certain community point of view and aspiration. However, the congress was not representative of Indian public opinion as a whole. It represented a few thousand professional men, journalists and politicians, all of them trained in European ideas. The British rulers of India had long ago introduced European methods of education into Indian colleges and universities, and in consequence there had grown up an Indian intelligenzia conversant with the English language and saturated with Western ideas.

This new intelligenzia, convinced as it was of the value of Western ideals and achievements, could not fail to be dissatisfied with many aspects of Indian life. At first it left politics severely alone, the early National congresses

concerning themselves with social and economic reforms, such as the suppression of child-marriage, the remarriage of widows, and wider education. But as time passed, matters of political reform came steadily to the fore. Saturated with English history and political philosophy as they were, the Indian intellectuals felt more and more keenly their total lack of self-government, and aspired to endow India with those blessings of liberty highly prized by their English rulers. Soon a vigorous native press developed, preaching the new gospel, welding the intellectuals into a self-conscious class, and molding a genuine public opinion. By the close of the nineteenth century the Indian intelligenzia was frankly agitating for sweeping reforms, like representative councils, increasing control over the executive and taxation, and the opening of the public services to Indians all the way up the scale.

Down to the close of the nineteenth century Indian discontent was, as I have said, confined to a small class of more or less Europeanized intellectuals who, despite their assumption of the title, could hardly be termed Nationalists in the ordinary meaning of the term. Their goal was neither independence nor the elimination of effective British governance, but merely the reforming of India along European lines, including a growing degree of self-government under British paramount authority.

But with the opening years of the twentieth century there came a change. The Russo-Japanese War shocked India, like the rest of Asia, broad awake. It roused among the peoples of Hindustan feelings of racial and political self-consciousness which had been dormant for centuries. True Nationalist symptoms began to appear. Indian scholars proclaimed the glories of the historic past. Reformed Hindu sects, like the Arya Somaj, lent religious sanctions. The little band of Europeanized intellectuals received a flood of recruits, thinking not in terms of piecemeal reforms on Western models, but of a new India, rejuvenated from its own vital forces, and free to work out its destiny in its own way. From the Nationalist ranks now arose the challenging slogan, "Bandemataram!" ("Hail, Motherland!")