buying abroad or selling abroad. The suggestion was made that the American farmer drop all consideration of that 10 per cent. of his product he has been selling abroad, and devote the corresponding acreage to raising what we now buy from abroad. The suggestion was accompanied by the qualification that the farmer should tolerate a prohibitive tariff for manufactures and all other lines of industry, the whole looking toward making America a self-contained country.

That is one school of national business economy. A good many people believe in it. But a good many do not; and this latter group is available to the Democrats if they are willing to accept the issue, and have the facility to make it clear to the public. If the Democrats take the contrasting position on the tariff, they will find some recruits who will look odd in any collection of traditional Democrats.

much repelled by anything else in the Democratic program. There are some manufacturers, also, whose circumstances will lead them to look with tolerance on a low tariff. For the future, since the domestic void is now about filled, the great market for American automobiles is going to be abroad. These exported automobiles, like our exported money, can best be paid for by facilitating, rather than preventing, the import of

The fact that America has become a great money-lending nation is going to lead to some odd realignments on the tariff. The interest and principal owed us from abroad can be paid only in one of two ways, either by shipments of gold or by shipments of goods. There is hardly an economist or business man or statesman who doesn't believe it is a disadvantage for America to receive more gold from abroad. If that method of payment is undesirable, it is a strange policy to deny our creditors the opportunity of paying in goods. Those considerable interests, banking and individual, who are concerned with our investments abroad, will be willing to follow the Democrats on a low-tariff position, if they are not too

equivalent goods. The American automobile manufacturer does not want a protective tariffhe can undersell the world, tariff or no tariff. But he does need facility for other countries to buy and pay for his machines.

On these three issues the Democrats can take a position opposed to that of the Republicans. Two of the positions commended to the Democrats, opposition to the Government in the shipping business, and

opposition to government regulation of rents, are more conservative than the position of the Republican leadership on these points. The other, the tariff, is an issue outside the field of the contrast between conservatism and radicalism.

It isn't necessary for the Democrats to exile themselves from the conservative field to find a position of contrast with the Republicans. Republicans. The permanent alignment of parties in the American system of government, and in the common mind of the majority of Americans, takes a form that was often put in words by Theodore Roosevelt, namely: Two parties, both prevailingly conservative on fundamental questions, but both progressive enough bid for the progressive vote.

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The party that takes the radical position on anything fundamental, such as abolition of the power of the Supreme Court, or favoring government ownership of railroads, is beaten at the start. There are some other positions that carry the same taboo, positions which the Democratic party is often solicited to take, but which are fatal for any party to take. One is the anti-prohibition position. A majority of the American voters are dry. Many even of those who would be willing to see some relaxation of the present status will shrink from any party that puts an attack on prohibition in its platform. If modification of our present prohibition laws is ever made, it will be made by those who are the friends of prohibition. That delicate bit of surgery will be entrusted to doctors who want the patient to live, not to any avowed enemy of all prohibition.

FOREIGN RELATIONS AND POLITICIANS

HE other fatal position is on foreign relations. The Democrats recognized that when they said in their recent platform, that the League of Nations should not be a partisan question. The Democrats can win only by presenting contrast with specific positions taken by the Republicans; and in the field of foreign relations there is nothing the Republicans will do or refuse to do, that will fail to agree with what a majority of Americans want. The Republican leaders are as willing as the Democratic leaders to take an affirmative and constructive position about foreign

affairs. The limitation that holds the Republican leaders back is the same that must be accepted by the Democratic leaders, namely, the caution of a majority of the American voters. That caution may be excessive; but it is a fact and must be so regarded until education or some other process shall have dissipated it.

One step the Democratic party needs to take through the sheer necessity of acquiring the capacity to function. It must abolish the two-thirds rule, whereby a candidate for the Presidential nomination must have two thirds of the delegates. Stated the other way round—and this is the way it really works-one third the delegates have a veto power.

That rule was devised by Andrew Jackson, under circumstances that no longer exist, to prevent a personal enemy from being nominated for Vice-President. During the past sixty years the rule has been kept alive by the South, on the theory that the rule gives the South a veto on anything that might interfere with their position on the question, chiefly, of Negro voting. But in the last convention the rule gave Tammany and Northern city organizations allied with Tammany a veto on what was desired by the South and West combined. That rule should be looked on from the broadest ground.

Thus seen, its effect is to prevent the Democrats from functioning normally. It makes of the party organization, not a flexible mechanism, but a crystallized deadlock, a permanent feud.

W

HEN I brought my three specimen White Indians to the United States, they interested many scientists in the government service at Washington and leading scientists elsewhere, because they seemed to offer a hope of solving several kinds of knotty problems.

First is the fascinating mystery of the ancient civilizations of the Western Hemisphere that disappeared under the impact with Europeans following the discovery of America by Columbus. Cortez found Mexico flourishing under Montezuma, with a highly organized political life, well-developed arts in precious stones and metals and in architecture, a literature of historical records as advanced as that of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, and an astronomical science comparable with that of the ancient Egyptians. Pizarro found the Incas of Peru enjoying an equally high civilization, with the additional blessing of a science of medicine as highly developed as any in Europe and in many respects superior, for the Incas had originated the use of quinine, a drug of more general value than any in the Caucasian pharmacopoeia.

Within a century after Columbus's arrival, these great civilizations had crumbled into dust. The Spaniards destroyed the political unity of these countries, killed or dispersed the men of art and learning, and enslaved the peoples in a servitude that made education impossible. The palaces and monuments fell into decay, and in modern times it is doubtful if a score of men exist who could, if they would, decipher the hieroglyphics left by the Mayas of Central America, for example, which by their variety and quan

tity undoubtedly hold the key to much lost history and science.

The White Indians may include some of these surviving repositories of the wisdom of the ancients, for the traditions of most of the brown Indian tribes on both continents contain the story of a miraculous white prophet who visited their ancestors, bringing with him knowledge of the arts and sciences, and who gave their people stable and wise government and all they know about nature's laws. Cortez found White Indians in Mexico City, worshipped as superior beings. The Incas were doubtless partly of white blood. The Mayas may have been-it seems likely from the evidence. Could my White Indians belong to one of these favored tribes?

NOT OF MONGOLIAN ORIGIN

HE first step toward finding out was,

naturally, to study the language. Dr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist of the Smithsonian Institution, and Dr. Paul Vogenitz, translator and language expert of the Post Office Department, undertook this task. The San Blas Indian interpreter, whom I brought also, was the first medium of communication. In a few weeks, the scientists had learned the language themselves. It early appeared that the language was phenomenal, because it was utterly unlike any other Indian tongue in the Western Hemisphere. All other Indians, whatever their dialect, use an agglutinative speech that suggests their Mongolian origin. But the San Blas language-the White Indians and the San Blas use the same-is not Mongolian in structure. On the contrary, it is pure Aryan, and most closely resembles Sanskrit in its syntax.

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Now Sanskrit, of course, is the mother of the Aryan tongues, including not only the Greek and Latin and their modern descendent languages such as French and Italian, but also the speech of the prehistoric tribes of northern Europe, from which the Germanic and Scandinavian languages derive. The English language, with its Saxon base and its Norman and Romance superstructure, is, therefore, doubly descended from the Sanskrit. The White Indian tongue is thus more nearly related to the speech of Topeka, Kansas, than it is to the speech of aboriginal Indians who have lived for thousands of years as their neighbors in the Panamanian jungle.

TH

MELODIOUS, NOT GUTTURAL

HE White Indians call their language Tule. It is described by Dr. Harrington as one of the most melodious and smooth sounding tongues in the world. This quality arises chiefly from the fact that no two consonants ever come together in Tule: the words are made up of an alternating flow of consonant and vowel, so that no harsh or guttural or staccato effects mar its melodious beauty. Besides the five vowel sounds and the two semi-vowels W and Y, the language contains only eleven consonant sounds, K, T, Ch, Sh, Ts, S, L, M, N, R, and P, making an alphabet of only eighteen characters in all.

Practically all other Indian languages are guttural, or "agglutinative," and are consequently harsh by comparison. The Polynesian languages have "choky" or throaty sounds, that make them difficult for a Caucasian to speak. But Tule offers no such difficulties. It is, indeed, probably the easiest of all languages for a Caucasian to learn. The only "tricky" thing about it is this: every sound has two forms, one short and one long. In this way, the number of sounds available for the construction of words is doubled. This device, which is similar to one employed in Finnish, likewise provides the language with sufficient flexibility to furnish the necessary number of roots and affixes to give a rich vocabulary.

The other Indian tongues, of the agglutinative type, build complex words by putting together separate roots and wordelements. The Tule tongue proceeds quite differently: it follows the habit of other analytical languages and invents a distinct new word to express each new idea or to describe each new object.

Perhaps the most curious fact about Tule is that the men and women do not pronounce the language alike. The boys are taught a masculine pronunciation of each word, whereas the girls learn what the scientists have termed a "feminine lisp" for the same word. Thus, where Olo and Chepu, the boys under examination, use the sound Ch, Margarita, the girl, uses Ts. She uses the S sound where they use the masculine Sh, and Y and L where they use K and R. They describe a chieftain as 'sakla," while Margarita calls the word "sayla." The boys say "chapu" when they mean "white,” but Margarita says "tseppi."

But an even more astonishing development awaited the scientists as they got deeper into the language. At least a dozen words turned up in the White Indian vocabulary that are identical in pronunciation and meaning with words that were used by the Norsemen at the time of the Battle of Hastings. Eleventhcentury Norwegian in Central America prior to Columbus! The following is a list of these and other surprising words in the San Blas language: