The tree is on a little ridge; each of the men is standing in a shallow water-pot passages in books that this practice will be found in many foreign countries. After all, it is only a kind of irrigation. Fortunately, the American people have evidence at home-good evidence, and well tried. Thirty years ago a physician, Dr. J. H. Mayer of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, turned his attention to farming, and planted an orchard on a gullied hillside. In the fight with these gullies he built barriers across them. At times water stood behind these barriers, and the physician-farmer observed that the near-by trees grew better than their neighbors. The reason was simple. The doctor took the hint, and made more of these waterpockets in the gullies. The trees continued to wave green leaves and long shoots in appreciation, and finally the doctor adopted the policy of putting his men at digging "water-pots," as he calls them, all over his hillsides. He uses it as a kind of knitting job for his labor force. whenever there is nothing else to do. The further he goes, the more enthusiastic he becomes. In the dry year of 1914 a survey of the orchard convinced Dr. Mayer that if he had had the proper number of water-pots on all of it, there would have been a thousand bushels more of fruit on his peach- and apple-trees. The soil is a micaceous clay, and "many of the water-pots retain water a week or ten days after a rain. Most of the waterpots are on a rather steep hillside, and we think we can easily notice the effects of the retained water-supply upon trees thirty, sixty, and even a hundred feet or more below the pots. We have failed to note any injury to any trees, although the pots in some cases happen to be within a few feet of the trees and are as much as two and a half feet deep." In Minnesota, more than a thousand miles from Dr. Mayer, and entirely unknown to him, another man, Colonel Freeman Thorp, a portrait-painter with an interest in the earth, has adopted similar methods of water conservation, and attained similar results-a great increase in productivity of the soil by so shaping the earth that water must stay upon it and soak into it rather than run away to waste, to flood, and to destroy. This water-pocket system is fine for pasture, fine for trees, but open to question as a feasible device for the grain crops on some soils and under some conditions. Its excellence and adaptation to trees, however, make a strong argument for the development of a tree-crop agriculture, by A hillside orchard. The man is standing in one water-pot and another is visible to the right which we may utilize this new power. We do not have to depend solely upon grains. It is merely the accident of an early start that we improved the wild grains rather than the wild trees. Colonel Thorp finds by experiment that acorns fed to swine are eighty per cent. as valuable as corn. The swine knew this before Noah led them into the ark. It is only man that is slow. Colonel Thorp's experiments convince him further that he can grow a hundred bushels of acorns to the acre on Minnesota sandy soil that will not naturally make twenty bushels of corn per acre. One of his experiments with oaks is most suggestive. He took two acorns from the same black oak-tree (Quercus velutina) and planted them fifty feet apart on a hillside. One took its natural course, and the other had a waterpocket to hold for it all the rain that fell on a few square rods. In seventeen years the natural one was six inches in diameter, the other twelve. This means virtually four times as great in cross section or wood content per foot of trunk, and a total wood content about six times that of the smaller and shorter tree. The natural tree produced acorns in fourteen years. The water-conservation tree produced at seven years one half bushel of acorns; at ten years, one bushel; at seventeen years, two and one half bushels. Pigs, goats, and sheep are glad to harvest such a crop at no expense whatever, a process which in its economic aspect bears so close a resemblance to perpetual motion as to be decidedly interesting. It suggests the need of developing more forage and food-yielding trees. It gives a new vision for the hills. Instead of burned slopes, gullies, poor corn-fields, bare pastures, unprosperous cabins, and an outrush of flood waters to desolate two thousand miles of needed valley, I see the hills green with spreading and fruitful black walnut-trees, hickorytrees, pecan-trees, Japanese walnut-trees, Persian walnut-trees, hazelnut-trees, apple-trees, peach-trees, cherry-trees, mulberry-trees, persimmon-trees, oak-trees (many varieties), honey-locusts, and trees of many other varieties, each one of a selected strain producing a food crop for man or his beasts, or some raw material to send off to market. Near the bases of these trees are the basins, or water-pockets, that double their growth by preventing loss of rain-water. This removes the necessity of cultivation, prevents soil destruction, and wipes out floods so far as that particular tract of land is concerned. Forty-eight thousand five hundred square miles of land with water-pockets capable of holding the water of a two-inch rain would store an amount equal to all the water above danger-line in the worst flood the Ohio River ever had at Cincinnati. That flood occurred in 1884, and lasted for nineteen days. The conventional reservoirs of the engineers would not fill up if the watersheds above them were in forest, or waterpocket tree crops. Thus the field waterpocket system gives new lease of life to the storage reservoir, and probably duplicates it as a storage factor, because it not only holds water, but also sends it into the earth to come out months later in springs. With field or forest waterpockets or both, and with storage reservoirs along the upper courses, the Missis sippi would never break its levees, for it is the second half of the flood rush that does the damage. With such a water-pocket system stuffing water into the earth, the upland springs would have water to discharge long after rains had ceased, and the disastrous low stages of our rivers would be of the past. In an hour you can make an experimental water-pocket with a pick and shovel or a plow. It is good exercise and an interesting experiment. I have one in my side yard, where I can watch it from the window. It is surprising how it sends water into the subsoil. As a serious experiment I commend it to every agricultural experiment station, to every forester, and to the thinkers of every city that suffers from flood or water shortage. T By K. K. KAWAKAMI understand Japan's course of action in China, it is of the utmost importance to remember that the island. empire endeavored for years to keep herself free from European entanglements over the Chinese question. As early as 1884 France offered her hand to Japan and proposed that the two nations should enter into an alliance with a view to coercing China. The Japanese politely declined the overture. They had long been imbued with the idea that their relations with the "celestials" were, to use a Chinese metaphor, the "relations of the lips to the teeth." Destroy the lips, and the teeth are cold. To strengthen this traditional belief, General Ulysses S. Grant in 1879 advised the mikado to beware of European intrigues and to foster friendly relations with the court at Peking. In those days it was Japan's sincere desire to cement friendship with China, and, if possible, to declare the doctrine of "Asia for Asiatics." Fate, however, decreed that the two nations should come to blows over the disposition of Korea, the country which China had been scheming to annex. Japan regarded the independence of Korea, lying within gunshot of her archipelago, as essential to her own existence. At any rate, she went to war with the conviction that China was the aggressor, and that she was forced to fight a war of self-defense against a foe believed by the world to be far more powerful than herself. When Japan brought China to her knees, the Government at Peking unfortunately invited European interference with the peace terms which it had been negotiating with the victorious foe. The result was the triple interference of Germany, Russia, and France, compelling Japan to abandon the Liao-tung Peninsula, which she had just secured from China as the chief spoils of war. For the time being Chinese diplomacy seemed to have won. The glamour of its victory, however, soon vanished, and in the course of a few years China's blunder in having invited European interference became obvious. When, toward the end of the nineties, the powers of Europe began to vie with one another in establishing footholds in China, Japan's traditional policy of aloofness became no longer feasible. The doctrine of "Asia for Asiatics," which she had once dreamed of enunciating, was no longer practicable. The only course open to her was to coöperate with such European powers as might be friendly to her, and thus preserve the balance of power against the intruders of Europe. In plain language, Japan had to play the game as Europe played it. The result was the AngloJapanese alliance. The record of European intrusion upon China is indeed appalling. We may begin with the classic event of the British annexation of Hong-Kong in 1841 as the result of the Opium War. In 1860, Russia swindled China out of the vast maritime territory lying to the north of the Amur River. In the same year the allied forces of England and France pillaged Peking and laid the magnificent Summer Palace in ashes. In 1874, France wrested. Annam from China, and in 1885, Tonquin was also taken by the same power. In 1887 even Portugal cut Macao out of the huge pie. All this was alarming enough to the Japanese, but the infant nation, having just been lifted out of the cradle of seclusion, was still directing its unsteady steps along untried roads, and was in no position to raise a voice against Western encroachment upon China. With the German seizure of Kiao-chau in November, 1897, the political horizon of China assumed an aspect more menacing to the Japanese. This ominous move on the part of Germany was followed by the Russian occupation of Port Arthur in December, 1897; the British lease of Weihai-wei on April 3, 1898; the French lease of Kwan-chow Bay on April 10, 1898; and the British lease of Kau-lung Peninsula on June 3, 1898. Even Italy de manded, on February 28, 1899, the lease of San-mun Bay, on the coast of Chekiang province, as a coaling-station and naval base, as well as the right to construct a railway from San-mun Bay to Po-yang-hu Lake. In this international rivalry for the establishment of spheres of influence, the outstanding fact is that the European powers were actuated by sheer lust for territory. They had no real grievance to justify their action in China. Toward them China never assumed an aggressive attitude, as she did toward Japan over the Korean dispute. Situated thousands of miles away from the far East, these European countries could not possibly contend, as Japan reasonably could, that the unstable condition in China was a menace to them. The plain fact is that they took advantage of China's weakness and were bent upon exploiting the country to satisfy their own greed. Had Japan been strong enough to call a halt to them, she would have unequivocally enunciated an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine before Europe's scramble for Chinese territory began. But Japan was weak, and when she at last began to awaken to the consciousness of her prowess she found European nations already firmly fortified in Chinese territory. After the German seizure of Kiao-chau it was no secret that the chancelleries of Europe began seriously to talk of the break-up of China. Not satisfied with obtaining leases of territory on the Chinese coast, they immediately entered into sharp competition for railway, mining, and various other concessions. China was divided into various spheres of interest or influence, and the huge empire seemed quivering upon the verge of disruption. Confronted by this ominous situation, Secretary Hay addressed, in September, 1899, a circular note to the leading powers, setting forth the American attitude toward China, which has come to be known as the "open-door" policy. It may be unpleasant for the Americans to learn, but it is well to admit, that it was not Secretary Hay's note which prevented the disruption of Chinese territory. and the closing of the open door. My knowledge of far-Eastern diplomacy in the last score of years leads me to the conclusion that it was not the American Government, but Japan, which made earnest efforts to enforce Mr. Hay's doctrine of the open door. But before attempting to prove this contention, let us define the meaning of this celebrated doctrine. The term "open door" has become the slogan and watchword of writers on the Chinese situation. Chinese situation. Strangely enough, few have attempted to define it. Even so distinguished an authority on China as Mr. George Bronson Rea has failed to give the American public a clear definition of the term. Mr. Hay issued two different circular notes on two different occasions. The first was dated September 8, 1899, and the second July 3, 1900. In the first note Mr. Hay's aim was simply to secure equal commercial opportunities for all nations. In his own language the so-called open door was defined as follows: First. "That no power will in any way interfere with any treaty port or vested interest within any so-called sphere of influence or interest or leased territory it may have in China." Second. "That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to all merchandise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said sphere of influence (unless they be free ports), no matter to what nationality it may belong, and that duties leviable shall be collected by the Chinese Government." Third. "That no power shall levy any higher harbor dues on vessels of another nationality frequenting any port in such sphere than shall be levied on vessels of its own nationality, or any higher railroad charges over lines built, controlled, or operated within its sphere, on merchandise belonging to citizens or subjects of other nationalities transported through |