I am sitting down to write while it is fresh-knowing well that this letter can't sail for four days yet, this being Saturday night, but having too new and exciting a tale to tell to make it possible to wait. I had expected to cycle down to Windsor to see the King and Kaiser kiss each other on both cheeks, or shoot pheasants. I didn't go, after all. I read this inclosed article in the paper and could not resist. A king and queen, another queen, a duke or two, a prince and princess for bridal couple, ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary (unofficially present, of course)-why, by all the rules of poker, such a full house of royalty outweighs two kings—and I went joyfully by train and bicycle.

Right under our noses, fifty miles from Oxford, to see personally the mediæval monarchy of Spain, and-clothed in gorgeous raiment-the past and possible future monarchy of France!

I saw it all, except of course the wedding and reception which were most of it, and under a beautifully clear English afternoon. I think I would have butted into those, too, if I had had time enough; but you see I only learned of it this morning. As it was, my luck stood by me, and I got in nobly at the finish.

But to start-I took the train to Evesham, carrying my bicycle, and rode out about three miles to Wood Norton. There I was blocked, at the foot of a long drive leading up to the beautiful Manor House of the Duc de Orléans. I hadn't counted on that, but supposed that I would have a box seat reserved for me at the ceremony, distant perhaps, but good-and had even donned respectable non-collegiate clothes for the occasion. Nobody but messenger-boys, however, got through that gateway-a magnificent arch, by the way, of stone and gilded scroll ironwork, decorated with arms and fleur-de-lis of France

quite monarchical. And the messengerboys were too small to impersonate, and, besides, wore round hats and had red bicycles-things which I couldn't provide at the moment.

After I had got tired of looking at the view I sensibly rode back to town and got a good lunch. Then, riding out again, I got a good position at the top of a steep hill where all the automobiles had to go slow, not only for the hill, but on account of a sharp curve as well.

First of all came the Grand Duke Vladimir, and a fine big bearded man he was.

Evening dress he wore, and a huge fur overcoat thrown open, and many decorations that sparkled gloriously. Then right after him came the Princess of Battenberg-mother of the Queen of Spain-with the Italian Ambassador. This is no fashion plate, or I would tell you what she had on-but you will have read all that a week ago in the papers. He was magnificent in cream white uniform and gold braid, with a short cream-colored cloak lined with red.

Then it was nip and tuck-the automobiles coming by in a perfect stream. If I had had bombs, I could have found a market for them all. Finally came the Queen and then the King of Spain-the latter alone with his chauffeur in a great automobile. He sat on the front seat beside the driver, in blue and gold. It is hard to follow my thoughts as he came up the hill-thoughts of the King of Spain, of Aragon and Castile, of Philip the Second, of the Armada, and the Moors, and Torquemada, and the Empire of the West with its silver fleets. A thousand things were brought back strong to me while he came. A boy, a nice boy, waving his hand to the crowd. Not a bit like my imaginary King of Spain who existedwell, I don't know just why, but perhaps to beat back the Moors into Granada, and fight Charlemagne, and marry Mary Queen of Scots, and to pay ransom when captured. Like the old Dutch captain: "He thinks he will take to the sea again

For one more cruise with his buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen

And sell him in Algiers."

I don't know as there is any connection, but that's a bit my idea of the King

of Spain. There's a whole lot more than the man that is tied up with that title. Now Emperor William would, I think, be Germany to me and act it. But who can act King of Spain! This all sounds rather vague to you, I suppose, but then I am not trying to write an essay on him. A nice boy. I hope he will be very happy. He looks very much so. Good luck to him!

So then I thought the show was over, and even started to ride on to Stratfordon-Avon for dinner. But darkness dropped too fast and train connections were very uncertain, so back I went to Evesham and had tea, watching the crowd until my train time. The train left at 6:01, south-bound, to Oxford. I was stopped near the station by soldiers and told to "book my passage on the other side. I went across, and was told to go back again. This I did-you see what training I had gone through when I say I did so meekly, doing an thing to avoid a row. I was again refused, and, this time protesting, had my reward, and for the first time found leniency in the British Constitution that supports the petty rules against which I had buzzed and butted my poor American head so often in vain.

They let me cross once more, but this time, leaving my bicycle as security, by a little overhead bridge, reserved for the exclusive weekly passage of some first assistant underling official who cleans the station lamps, when he crosses on Thursday nights.

Without going into details as to the origin of these rights and privileges, I will say that I crossed to the north bound side, and found myself in a court guarded by bobbies and inclosed in masonry and solid walls of infantry. Seeing myself thus protected within the laws against which I had butted, and especially enjoying the sight of the policemen vigorously keeping the crowd from intruding on my private courtyard, I leisurely booked my passage and then looked around. Near me was a gorgeous carpet strewn with gilded fleur-de-lis. Without deigning to make inquiries, I haughtily advanced and placed myself among the other diplomats, ambassadors, plenipotentiaries, detectives, and such--and, with ten min

utes to spare before train time, took off my hat like the rest and waited.

They just came in time to avoid missing me. The Duc de Orléans, the Queen of Portugal, and finally the bride and groom, a Bourbon prince and the princess of France!

I stood it as best I could, thinking of that third-class ticket and a bicycle check in my pocket-and formed in line to let them pass, while the thousand soldiers saluted and the mob cheered from behind the gates.

Then I bolted for my train, which came tootling in.

But, will you believe it! their coming to the north-bound platform was all a bluff, too, and I looked back to see the whole crowd, six couples, with the Duc in the lead, following me over the bridge. Then I slowed down, knowing the train would wait, and descended the stairs two hundred feet in advance of royalty (I couldn't get behind them, you see, in a covered passage without being arrested), like the Master of the whole Ceremony; and all the porters and station-masters and things, members of whose caste I had been imploring but a few minutes before, taking off their hats, cheered, and formed a lane down which I walked on in advance of the bridal couple.

Then I tried to vanish, and a moment later came around again "incognito," thus escaping unnoticed into my thirdclass compartment-which, after all, happened to constitute one end of the car which carried the royal lot—and so rode in the royal carriage as far towards London as Oxford.

You will read nothing of this in the papers. You see, for political reasons, I could not disclose my identity. Neither King nor Kaiser nor German Ambassador nor their like could attend a French royal wedding without complicating matters with the French Republic; and I felt, even in my proudest moments, glad that Mr. Roosevelt would not be embarrassed by my presence there-seeing that I went incognito that way. My closest chance

"To singe the beard of the King of Spain Or capture another Dean of Jaen, And sell him in Algiers."

CYRUS F. WICKER.

I

N the establishment of the American Government the effort was to create a régime under which the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the Government should exercise their functions independently. As the theory has been applied in our Nation, under the political conditions which have developed, an extraordinary mingling of executive and. legislative relative functions has resulted. A large share of the appointing power is to-day practically in the hands of the members of the Congress. On the other hand, it would be impossible to imagine a President of the requisite intelligence and character who would not seek by all legitimate means to impress upon the Congress the principles and the measures in which he believed. Such measures are, however, always introduced under the name of some Senator or Congressman. It rarely happens that a political measure bears the name of a President. The Monroe Doctrine is almost the sole example of a political policy permanently accepted by the American people bearing a President's name.

The present President of the United States has not hesitated vigorously to urge far-reaching measures looking toward permanent policies and the correction of recognized abuses. These have had to do in the main with the pressing questions which belong to our time and our day-the Panama Canal, the trusts, forest preservation, and the like. Among others which he has consistently and steadily advocated is one which, if adopted, must be regarded as an expression of permanent policy. This is the doctrine that the true interests of this country will be conserved by the maintenance of a strong navy, and

that, furthermore, such a policy makes for the peace of the world. So steadily has this doctrine been advocated by President Roosevelt in its larger aspect that it might justly be called a Roosevelt doctrine.

This proposition of President Roosevelt has come in for serious criticism, and this not so much at the hands of professional politicians as from men who are interested in the wider questions of policy of our Nation and of our Government. Most of all has the measure been criticised by men who are sincere believers in the movement for international peace.

The present seems, on the whole, an opportune time to examine this thesis of President Roosevelt's, not in relation to isolated and passing events, but rather in its relation to the deeper underlying motives and forces which move nations. To-day we are at peace with all the world and in relations of good will with all nations. It is at such a time that a nation finds its best opportunity to consider a measure of world policy. Rarely are its great questions settled in the best way under the spur of excited public opinion.

It is impossible to judge such a doctrine as this in its present status apart from the personality of the remarkable man whose advocacy of it has given it prominence. The value of any man's advice to his country must be judged in large measure from the estimate of himself, and the weight which any citizen will give to President Roosevelt's plea for a strong navy will depend somewhat on how much he thinks the President's advice to be worth.

As one looks back on our Nation's history, he realizes that in the shaping

of important policies the country has, on the whole, fared worse at the hands of those whose thinking was deficient than at the hands of those whose morals were crooked. High-minded sentimentalists have inflicted more injury in the advocacy of unwise measures than came from the treason of Arnold or the moral obliquity of Burr. In our own day the Democratic party-and incidentally the country has been quite as much demoralized by the loose thinking of the moral Mr. Bryan as by the loose money of the unmoral Mr. Hearst.

On the other hand, when we note the names of those political leaders whose figures grow larger as the years pass, we recognize that these are the men who combined moral purpose with the ability to think straight. The names of Washington, Franklin, Marshall, Lincoln, grow brighter because the years have decided that the measures for which they stood were fundamentally sound. Wise enough to lay aside the emotion of the day and of the hour, these men thought straight, and their mistakes were correspondingly few.

And it is to be noted that there is a vast difference between intellectual clev. erness and the ability to think straight. Many men there were in the group of Revolutionary worthies who were more brilliant men than Washington, but there were none who had in fuller measure that homely quality of common sense which took up a question impartially and impersonally and got the right answer.

No man's place in history and no man's work as the executive of a great nation is to be judged fairly at such close range as that in which we stand to President Roosevelt and his work. Whether his political leadership will be held to rest upon sound thinking as well as upon high civic ideals the wise years, as Lowell calls them, can alone decide.

This much at least may be said. His countrymen, with practical unanimity, believe in his seriousness of purpose and the genuineness of his political ideals. The man's life speaks for these things.

Mr. Roosevelt's weight as a thinker is not so universally conceded. Certain temperamental qualities have conspired to betray him into a number of personal

controversies. In these encounters he has not always succeeded in setting forth that even-handed picture of justice which he so admirably preaches, nor that discriminating sense of humor which is a saving grace in a statesman. His friends-I count myself one-appreciate the fact that these affairs have served to lend color to the charge that the President is a man of emotions, not a thinker.

Nevertheless, he who seeks to measure President Roosevelt fairly will not allow the incongruities of his personal relations to blind him to the man's larger work. Most Presidents are overwhelmed in the current of routine and of political commonplace. No President since Lincoln's day has so resolutely as Mr. Roosevelt brushed aside the day-by-day political problems to grapple with those larger questions of public policy and National morality which every President meets but few have the courage to face. It is in dealing with such questions that the President has done his best work, and in this he has shown not only moral courage but thinking ability and political sense of a high order. The proportion of Americans who think seriously on public questions has grown steadily since the campaign of education in 1896. The great majority of such men to-day are ready to follow the President because they believe not only in his courage but in his intellectual leadership. Any measure of large public importance, such as this question of the maintenance of a strong navy, which Theodore Roosevelt commends to his countrymen, deserves at their hands the most earnest consideration.

Is this contention of the President justified upon the firm ground of good morals and of efficient thinking? Or, putting it in another way, leaving out local and temporary excitements, shutting out of our ears the talk of the sensational press concerning Japan, is the doctrine of a strong navy for the United States justified upon those larger underlying principles which take into account our racial history, the progress of civilization, and our universal human nature?

The practical and immediate arguments both in favor of and against the plan of a strong navy have been so

often discussed in late years that I do not wish to rehearse them here. I venture, however, to call attention to certain fundamental considerations which arise out of the very process of our civilization, and which are, by reason of their universality, almost always overlooked. The influences which tend to make war or to prevent it are all contained in that slow process of evolution which has resulted in what we call to-day civilization. Those influences are to be the determining ones in the progress of the future, though their operation may be concealed by events of the day and of the hour. We reckon most surely when we do not forget them and when we seek to deal through them, even if their process is slower than our desires.

The part which fighting has played in the evolution of human beings is one whose story has never been fully told. We know that our race has been evolved through thousands of years during which the principal business of men was to fight. In truth, only a few centuries have elapsed-an insignificant time in the history of a race-since fighting was the principal business of even the most civilized nations.

The process by which individuals and nations have been gradually brought out of this state of incessant war into one of comparative peace has been the process of slow education. Aboriginal man led an isolated life, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him. Gradually the social instinct developed. Family and community life began, and out of this slow process there has grown a civilization under which war between individuals has been practically stopped in modern nations, and war between nations has become rare. The factors which have entered into this education are numerous. They rest partly on social, partly on commercial, partly on intellectual and religious grounds, but whatever that process may be and whatever may have been the factors most prominent in it, the civilization which we see to-day is the result of an education of men out of a state of warfare so recent that their fighting instincts have undergone no great change.

To see that this is true needs only the

briefest examination of civilized man as he stands to-day in his social, political, and international relations. The highest type of man that civilization has produced is still a fighter, and will, under provocation, throw his life away as fearlessly and as recklessly as the primeval man in his day-by-day conflicts. The difference is that the civilized man of to-day holds his fighting nature under the discipline of the law, of social custom, and of religious training. We have reached that stage in the social order in which civilized man agrees that his individual quarrels shall be settled by a tribunal charged with that duty. When he oversteps this convention, the law has the power to punish his transgression. The result is the disarmament of the individual.

Unfortunately, many of the causes which make for individual submission to the law are absent in the case of nations.

In the case of disagreement between individuals the courts not only decide as to the justice of the conflicting claims, but they have the power to enforce their decision. Back of the judge stands the policeman. If the court lacked the power to enforce its judgment, it would not be long before individuals would refuse to submit their causes to its adjudication. On the other hand, there is no international police, and the difficulty of creating one is enormous. The time may come when, by the evolution of our national relations, this may be possible, but that time is so far distant that it has small relation to the problem which we are considering.

Again, one who looks clear-eyed at this question cannot afford to leave out of account the essential selfishness of international action. Of all the Revolutionary leaders, George Washington was perhaps the man who had the clearest head. Looking back over his political life, it may probably be said with truth that the measures which he advocated have, on the whole, turned out to be more nearly right than those of any other leader, and that, on the other hand, he advocated fewer things which turned out to be mistakes.

In his Farewell Address, which will