the other fellow may be thinking about you, so nothing is more constraining to your own freedom of action. Prestige is an essential for the prizefighter, but an impossibility for the housekeeper. Prestige is a distinctly male prerogative, for a woman's most incapacitating inferiority to a man is her sense of humor. There is no real man who is not frank enough sometimes to strut; there is no real woman who is not too secretive ever to do so. In the present order of things you could not convince man or nation or rooster that their strutting does not somehow contribute to the welfare of the private henyard and to the dignity of nations, but when a hen shall at last rule the roost, she will not strut, believing it a waste of energy, and knowing also what all hens have always, in their hearts, thought about the strut.

Now politics is a curious conviction, possible only to the combative sex, that competition is somehow in itself constructive, that two helmsmen, one at each end of the boat, each striving in the opposite direction, are the best method of guiding the Ship of State on a straight course to port-a humorous figment of fancy inexorably disproved by the fact that as to principles and practices the two helmsmen are today seated so close together that no voter knows how to insert his piece of paper between them. A woman, innately frugal and housewifely, would prophesy from party government exactly the results she would prophesy from installing rival cooks in the same kitchen, arming each with a knife to protect her against attack from the other, and expecting the two under these conditions to provide for the children the most nourishing and economical meal obtainable. The conception that rival parties, jealously watching each other's actions, are the best means of conserving the public resources for the public use, is as ill advised as expecting the bellicose cooks not to employ the supplies in the pantry for the smashing of each others' heads, thus depriving the hungry nation of its proper amount of tinned soup and potted ham. The plodding, unimaginative Matriarch will regard politics as the fatal masculine tendency to become absorbed in the game to the neglect of the goal.

Because history is so sure to repeat itself, it does not need to hurry. Out of the far past ages, the Matriarch is steadily trekking her way back to us, simply because she has become an inex

orable economic necessity. When she returns to her prehistoric eminence, there will be no great change except in the size of her tent. She will cry to the males bowed with the cooking and weaving for the nations, "Out you go! Rise to your ancient spears and arrows! Courage to conquer the new beasts that would destroy the soul, to win new wastes for human pioneering! Look at the splendid male brains of you! Go forth and create! Out to your hunting! But mind what you bring back to me, for as of old it shall be the woman's part to sort the offal from the meat of men's kill. Wastefully now, you track the secrets of science to their lair, and bring back for the children's breakfast only the teeth and the claws, the clinking trophies of cynicism and destruction. Comrade man, you know me built for one function, and therefore forever weaker than you in body and in brain. Yet it may be because of that same function that the race is to be safeguarded by my vision into the future, vision that may make me, of the two of us, always the better conservator of your own creations, your own achievements."

Q. E. D. The Matriarch is more to be desired than dreaded in the future as in the past. But right here I whisper my humble, Missourian doubt. The prehistoric provides a field quite as alluring to romance as to research. I have always wondered whether there really was such a person as the Matriarch. Anyway, male historians say there was. Is it possible that men's own longing for emancipation invented the Matriarch of the misty past? Is it possible that men's own longing for emancipation may welcome the Matriarch of the misty future?

THE COLOSSUS OF THE NORTH

BY GEORGE WHEELER HINMAN, JR.

THERE is nothing more effective in dealing with an undeveloped mentality than a bugaboo. The fear of this imaginary monster and of his evil intentions may be relied upon to inspire in his supposedly prospective victim the most immediate and most violent reactions. A large bugaboo is particularly effective. We can all of us recall childish visions of ogres; and, whereas we were sometimes moved to emulate Jack-the-Giant-Killer and slay these enemies of our peace of mind, we were more often inclined to flee shamelessly from their threatened advent.

The Colossus of the North is the United States of America in bugaboo form. It is a Saxon-American ogre, conjured up by the political intellectual of Latin America to terrify his fellow citizens into following him and his counsel. Like Aladdin of the fairy tale, he rubs the lamp of desire, and in misty, intangible form, forth rises this monster genie to do his bidding. It capers about, making the most terrifying grimaces and extending its taloned hands hungrily in pursuit of prey. Like Saint George before the Dragon, the political intellectual of Latin America stands between his terrified people and the bugaboo, and brandishes in his good right hand his most trusted weapon, the palabra. It is difficult to translate in this sense the exact significance of the Spanish word, palabra. In substance, it means the right to talk.

In point of fact, the Colossus of the North has all the makings of an ideal bugaboo. In the first place, there, north of the Rio Grande, Saxon America has builded in record time one of the Great Powers of the world. Its mere size and success constitute an offense to the smaller and less successful. Secondly, in international affairs, the people of that Great Power are rather tolerant and easy-going. Having enormous resources of their own awaiting development, they have not felt the urge of the economic spur that has driven the hard pressed peoples of the other Great

Powers to pursue world empires. And, finally, this Great Power has pledged itself and has compelled others to respect the sovereignty of the less orderly younger nations in the New World.

In order to be able to understand the international psychology of the Latin American politician, we must take a glance at the history of the New World during the last century, and trace the development of a unique system of international philosophy. Something more than one hundred years ago, when the capitals of Continental Europe were discussing projects for reëstablishing Old World dominion over the would-be independent nations of Latin America, the man who at the moment chanced to be President of the United States made of public, official record the Doctrine that the Americas might no longer be encroached upon by non-American Powers. Because the President's name was James Monroe, the principle which he enunciated, and "in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved," came to be known throughout the world as the Monroe Doctrine.

The basic axiom underlying the Monroe Doctrine is the nation's fundamental, inalienable right of self defense. The President stated firmly that his Government could not view "in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States" an attempt by a European Power to control in any manner the destiny of the independent régimes of Latin America. This was a broad statement, covering almost every imaginable contingency which could involve an American and a non-American Government. There was, too, the inevitable implication of wide responsibilities. In international parlance, the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition provokes a retaliatory blow. In plain language, the United States announced itself prepared to fight any Old World Power which sought to interfere in the affairs of a New World Nation.

Because, for one reason or another, the nations of the Old World found it to their interest to heed this announcement as the decades passed, the nations of the New World worked out their national destinies in an international atmosphere unique in modern history. Immune to the operation of the everyday customs of world politics, the American Republics blazed a new trail in national self determination. They became the spoiled children

of the civilized world. Although of little international account, they spoke when not spoken to, and, when spoken to, their replies and their conduct were likely as not to be most impertinent toward their elders. They met such international obligations as suited their fanciful pleasure. Some of them developed persistent streaks of destructiveness, being given to gunfire and bloodshed and generally obstreperous behavior.

Elsewhere in the world, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, backward peoples were taken in hand by the Great Powers and were required to toe the mark. Those which failed to heed repeated warnings found themselves partly or wholly deprived of their sovereignty and compelled to conduct themselves more nearly in accord with a developing code of international good manners. The civilized world was becoming too closely knit an enterprise, too interdependent in an economic sense, to tolerate the repeated failure of any people to behave properly. If the people on the ground seemed unwilling or unable to develop their resources in an orderly manner for the benefit of all, some other people were always more than ready to take the matter in hand. Complete self determination among nations was-and is-as absurd as complete self determination among individuals. International anarchy is just as impossible as individual anarchy.

But, while the backward peoples of other continents were receiving their schooling, even the most disorderly in the Americas were permitted to run wild. Whenever one of the Great Powers, irritated beyond endurance, would reach for the switch of international chastisement, the Government at Washington would interpose a protesting hand which warded off the blow; and the unrepentant little American nation gleefully thumbed its nose at its would-be tutor. Of course, this sort of thing could not continue indefinitely. Powerful and influential in world affairs as it undoubtedly is, the Government at Washington cannot be expected to defy the consolidated opinion of the great civilized peoples in a matter of ordinary, international commonsense. In the case of backward societies elsewhere in the world, the Great Powers had said:

"Here, if you cannot behave yourselves, we will take you in hand."