Certainly in 1898, once peace was signed and Porto Rico conquered, they respected this independence. But their detachment was incomplete; they occupied the island, sent governors thither, and generously reformed the finances, education, and hygiene of the country. A provisional tutelage, soon followed by the proclamation of the Republic. Was this the independence of which Marti had dreamed? The treaty which proclaimed it also limited it; the Platt amendment found its way into the margin of a liberal text, reserving to the United States the right of intervention to remedy any possible anarchy. A strange severity, to demand of an untried tropical republic, where the hostility of castes was extreme, a serene and untroubled existence! Eventual military occupation for the purpose of suppressing revolts would be a dangerous snare to independence. Intervention in the public affairs of the old Spanish colony, twice repeated, was both times followed by a campaign of annexation in the Yellow Press. It is difficult to guess whether Yankee imperialism, with its ever-increasing appetite, will respect the autonomy of the island in the face of periodic occupations. It will probably prefer a protectorate or a final conquest when wearied of the turbulence of a democracy incapable of self-government. Will this beautiful island one day become a State {318} of the Anglo-Saxon or Federal Union? The accession of the Cubans to this democracy would cause a disturbance in the political and social world as profound as that created by Japanese immigration in the Far West. The plutocrats of the States have too much contempt for half-breeds and negroes willingly to accept deputies from a country where the profound admixture of races contains an important African element; a society which despises the negro cannot wholly agree with one ruled largely by Spanish half-castes of Indian and African ancestry. The protectorate would be a step toward the control of the Tropics which Mr. Benjamin Kidd and other English sociologists imagine to be the appanage of their race. The civilising work of the United States has been admirable. Once Spain was defeated and her colony conquered, they transformed the education, finance, and hygiene of the island to prepare the people for the liberty they ignored. It was four years before they gave it; four years of pedagogy, of which Brigadier-General Wood, military and civil chief, was in charge, until on the 20th of May, 1902, "thanks to the goodwill of President Roosevelt, we were recognised as having attained our majority."[2]