After recalling the "spheres of influence" of the different nations and the mode in which South Africa has been parcelled out without any regard for the native inhabitants or their rights in the question, it becomes clear that the world, for all its complacent condemnation of the men of the older time, has not changed a particle since Columbus' Century. The two Latin nations, the Spaniards and the Portuguese, were the conquerors and colonizers in the early sixteenth century. The Teutonic nations, England and Germany, because they had replaced Spain and Portugal as the leading commercial countries, did the work in the later nineteenth. The differences between the modes of action and the general conduct of affairs at the two periods are very slight when compared to the close similarities of motive and purpose. Nations at both periods were looking for a region by which they could enrich themselves, and explorers and colonists and pioneers who went out were actuated by just the same motives at both times. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether we have point for point accomplished anything like so much good for the natives as the Spaniards tried to do, and as we have seen in the {273} chapter on Columbus' Century in America, often with striking success. After all, it must not be forgotten that there are more Indians alive in Mexico and in South America now than when Columbus landed. It has been impossible as yet to lift the natives up to the high plane of civilization of their European invaders, which has been reached only after many centuries of training, but undoubtedly much has been done. In many of these countries even the natives are nearly ready for self-government, and the countries with the handicap of their mixed races are, considering all the conditions, as prosperous as we are, and visitors often declare their upper classes possessed of a higher state of culture than ours. President Taft, after thorough practical experience in the Philippines, declared that the natives were on the high road to readiness for self-government and that they represent the only example of a people who, invaded by civilized conquerors and colonists, had been gradually lifted out of their barbarism on to a higher and higher plane. The beginning of this accomplishment came in Columbus' Century. It is only by comparing what our own and that century did in the solution of similar problems that we can get any idea of how admirable in many ways is the work of the earlier period. If at the end of the next century the natives of Africa shall fare as well as those of South America and the Philippines, the comparison will be more satisfactory.