The danger is therefore serious; the island is already in the lion's mouth. Only a skilful policy can keep the hope of deliverance alive. The servitude offered by the modern Cyclops is only a gilded pill; and to swallow it the merchants of the island would willingly forget their national pride. Analysing Rodo's book, Señor Castellanos has denounced the excessive utilitarianism of these men, without idealism, and full of a cupidity and gross materialism, which makes any collective effort towards national unity {322} impossible. Poets and dreamers, the Cubans would need to undergo some prodigious change before one could interest them in action, before they could understand in the medley of political conflict what is really in the interests of the country; before they could establish political solidarity in the place of anarchy, and temper their easy confidence in the Yankee by a necessary and self-preserving scepticism. Could they ever transform their intellectual gifts into a less showy but more efficacious capacity for conflict and discipline? Will they acquire a sense of reality? Cuba should serve the rest of Latin America as a kind of experimental object-lesson. She suffers from the characteristic malady of the race, the divorce between intelligence and will. She opposes the Anglo-Saxon invasion, being still thoroughly Spanish, her deliverance being a matter of yesterday, but American also by the mixture of the two races, the conquerors and the vanquished, by the usual Latin virtues and defects. The loss of her independence would be a painful lesson to the republics of Central America, and to Mexico even, where anarchy is paving the way for servitude. The United States offer peace at the cost of liberty. The alternatives are independence or wealth, material progress or tradition. The choice between dignity and a future is a painful one. Only an abundant immigration under benevolent tyrants strong enough to enforce a lasting peace, only a new orientation of the national life, setting business and industry and rural life before politics, could save the country from the painful fate which seems to be hers. A fresh intervention, followed doubtless by annexation, would demonstrate the racial incapacity for self-government--a mournful experience. The successive rule of Anglo-Saxons and Creoles would render obvious the superiority of the former in the matter of administration, economics, and politics. [1] See _Como acabó la dominación, de España en America_, E. Piñeyro, Paris. [2] Enrique Collazo, _Cuba intervenida_, Havana, 1910, p. 93. [3] _Informe del Gobernador Charles E. Magoon_, Havana, 1909, pp. 26, 39. [4] Cited in _Cuban Pacification_, Washington, 1907, p. 506. {323} CHAPTER V THE JAPANESE PERIL The ambitions of the Mikado--The _Shin Nippon_ in Western America--Pacific invasion--Japanese and Americans.