I had of course heard of that Joseph Fiske, but his name to me was only a word meaning money. I had never thought of Joseph Fiske as a human being. At school and at the Point when we wanted to give the idea of wealth that could not be counted we used to say, “As rich as Joe Fiske.” But I answered, in a tone that suggested that I knew him intimately: “Oh, that Fiske,” I said. “But what has he to do with Honduras?” “He owns it,” Aiken answered. “It’s like this,” he began. “You must understand that almost every republic in Central America is under the thumb of a big trading firm or a banking house or a railroad. For instance, all these revolutions you read about in the papers--it’s seldom they start with the people. The _puebleo_ don’t often elect a president or turn one out. That’s generally the work of a New York business firm that wants a concession. If the president in office won’t give it a concession the company starts out to find one who will. It hunts up a rival politician or a general of the army who wants to be president, and all of them do, and makes a deal with him. It promises him if he’ll start a revolution it will back him with the money and the guns. Of course, the understanding is that if the leader of the fake revolution gets in he’ll give his New York backers whatever they’re after. Sometimes they want a concession for a railroad, and sometimes it’s a nitrate bed or a rubber forest, but you can take my word for it that there’s very few revolutions down here that haven’t got a money-making scheme at the bottom of them.