of American liberty is seen in the circumstance that they are spending 42 per cent. of their budget or $5,000,000 a year on the education of their masses.

But it is not easy for us to quote "culture" in known values, and we have averred that Porto Rico possesses a high degree of culture.

For many years prior to the advent of our flag, Porto Rico was one of the standard-bearers of an ancient and noble race in America. To this island, where neither revolution nor abject poverty aroused irreconcilable hatred of the Mother Country, came Spanish tradition, the feudal nobility of Spanish character, and her pure blood, to blend happily and contentedly with the descendants of gay and happy-go-lucky Andalusia. The people of Porto Rico are the sons and daughters of those whose precept it is to preserve the illusions of life in order to attain happiness.

Now, "culture" is by no means the only qualification of importance in the make-up of a people, though powerful among assets. Nevertheless, the degree of culture of a people is a tremendously important feature from the standpoint of a university, and some of the outstanding factors in Porto Rican culture should be specifically mentioned in order that we may know something of those among whom we are thinking of establishing a centre where all of this Western World may meet and exchange ideas.

The Porto Rican is adaptable, very gentle, and happy-hearted, albeit conservative in his forms of social usage. His family loyalty is positively remarkable, his devotion to his island wholehearted, his hospitality patriarchal. He avoids being disagreeable because he prefers to keep in a good humor and dislikes to hurt others' feelings. He treats others as he would like to be treated by others, he puts his self-respect above all other considerations, and, like most island people, he has the most unadulterated conception of personal liberty, liberty of thought, of speech, and of action. While he has a very keen sense of humor, he also has an exuberant imagination and takes naturally to art, poetry, music and philosophy. Above all, he seeks to couch his thoughts in pure and elegant expression, and has a strong taste for the ideal. That the ideal is seldom attained does not seem in the least to dampen his enthusiasm.

If I were to select among all his good qualities one which seems to me most to recommend him, I should single out his hunger and thirst for knowledge. The people who want to learn generally do learn. They are quick to absorb new ideas and their intuitive perception is keen. Guided by this passion for knowledge and experience, a pilgrimage to the old country in ante-bellum days was a biennial pastime for wealthy planters and business men. In Spain and France their sons and daughters were educated and back to Porto Rico they came to sustain the standards of old Europe. And now that they are Americans, hundreds wander to Continental and English-speaking America, drawn by this lust for knowledge, many of them without being able to speak a word of the tongue of the Republic in which they have put their trust and for which they have so genuine and deep a respect. That this trust and respect are genuine and deep is easy to prove, for nearly every family of consequence born and bred to Spanish ways is sending its sons and daughters to receive their higher education in the United States, and they return Americans in America's broadest sense. Until we have more of that kind of Americans, loyal in their heart of hearts to the United States, but with an intelligent bond of sympathy with Spanish-speaking countries to our south, we shall never make real friends in South and Central America.

This, in a few words, is the race and tradition of Porto Rico,— a race of pure blood, pure Spanish blood. This race predominates in the highlands and urban centers and rules in all the island.

But Porto Rico has more. It has 49,246 negroes and 301,816 mulattoes, nearly one-third of the total population. One of the most creditable features of the island character is race tolerance. The colored man never became the enemy of the white man, because he was always kindly treated. He was liberated from slavery without war or fear by the goodwill of the Porto Rican people. Negroes live contentedly by the side of the white man without attempting to force themselves on his social group because they have their own-but this is the reason, and not racial prejudice.

There are, however, still other nationalities to link Porto Rico with the outside world. The French influence comes mainly

from Corsica. There are English families, Dutch families, German families, and a particularly fine stock of the old Spanish families which originally settled in Venezuela but have made Porto Rico their home. There are 32 Chinese and 4 Japanese.

The number of continental Americans is about two thousand, perhaps one-fourth of them being from New York. Those who have made their home there long, and especially those who have married there, give daily evidence of a union which will bring great satisfaction to the United States as it has already brought to the island new ideas, material progress, and the progressive uplift of the submerged mass.

The influence of American culture on the island is tremendous. Not the traditional formula of polite society so much as that special culture which we are proud to call Americanism. Not the Americanism which seeks to turn Porto Rico into a poor imitation of some particular section of the continental States, but the Americanism which seeks to bring Porto Rico into the Union with all that is distinctively Porto Rican and not hostile to the National Constitution, traits and customs.

Let us take a cursory glance at trade conditions. The island must produce the most valuable of money crops in order to support the population, enormous for its small size. This it does. The great industry is sugar; next comes tobacco, and next coffee, both of the latter products being of a peculiarly high grade. The fruit and garden truck industry and needle work are important factors in making Porto Rican trade what it is.

A few figures will show the resources of this little land: In 1922, the total value of exports was $72,172,571, as against $8,583,967 in 1901. In 1922 the total imports amounted to $64,175,149, an excess of exports over imports of $7,997,422. Ninety per cent. of this external commerce is with the United States. Of the total value of exports in 1922, $40,820,330 is credited to sugar, about $15,000,000 to tobacco, and $4,300,000 to coffee, the market for coffee being practically all outside the United States. The property valuation in June, 1921, was $303,200,578.

The island is one of the summits of a mighty submerged mountain chain, once 27,000 feet high, and the deepest part of the Atlantic lies but a hundred miles north of it. It is the fourth in size

of the Antilles. Its temperature is equable, ranging from 78 degrees Fahrenheit in January to 82 degrees in August. Its minimum at the coolest points is 57; its maximum in the hottest is 99. The average humidity is 77. The rainfall amounts to 60 inches per annum in San Juan, 45 inches in Ponce, and 135 inches in the forest reserve of Luquillo; as a rule not falling below 100 inches throughout the mountainous interior.

When Columbus was asked at the Court of Spain to give an idea of the configuration of this island, he drew from his doublet his crumpled handkerchief and threw it upon the table without remark. And so it is today. Porto Rico is a rectangle, 100 miles by 35, with a narrow coast strip and a mountainous interior. These mountains are wooded or cultivated to their tops, and are disproportionately high for the size of the island, ranging from 2,500 to 3,500 feet. It is on the littoral that we find a green carpet of waving cane, interwoven with citrus fruit orchards. On the slopes and in the foothills we find tobacco, and in the highlands coffee grown under shade and intermingled with bananas. In a thousand rivulets and mountain torrents stream the waters that make the island a poem in green and gold.

Over all is the seal of the tropics, the royal palms, upstanding like enchanted soldiers uniformed in green and white, with their plumed heads and their eternal salaam to the dancing blue sea. The scenery resulting from this combination of mountain, stream and fertile lowland, is extremely varied and beautiful. When we first occupied Porto Rico we found 267.4 kilometers of macadamized road. Many of the 68 towns were only reached by steep and rough mountain trails. Today we have 1,375.5 kilometers of macadamized roads and no one of the 78 towns of today is without communication with the coast.

When we reflect that of the 1,300,000 inhabitants, over 1,000,000 live in the country districts, we cannot be surprised to find these verdant hills dotted with dwellings, all picturesque, most of them thatched huts, many of them fine old plantation residences. The scenery of Porto Rico is that of a model for what Theodore Roosevelt called a tropical Switzerland in miniature. Its beauty is feminine. One speaks of it as "beautiful", never as "grand". All is sketched in curves. The mountains have no angles; all are

exquisitely moulded, all are clothed in rich green, all are garnished with flowers. Yet there are dizzy precipices looking into cool ravines and high shelves cut out for the road in solid rock from which the crumpled handkerchief of Columbus and the inimitable blue of the American Mediterranean can be contemplated.

One might go on describing what is destined to be the favorite objective of our incessant travellers of the North, but one feature of the island must be emphasized. It is impossible to find for its size more varied scenery in any part of the American tropical world; mountain scenery, views of mountain and sea combined, great tracts of sugar land, miles of fruit trees, queer kopje-like cave hills, picturesque towns, all reached by shaded roads as smooth as a floor, all full of roadside detail. Nor is it easy to find many countries in the tropics where a man can work in a tropical city like San Juan and in two hours, by a variety of good roads, reach a number of mountain towns from 1,500 to 2,000 feet high, where he can sleep cool all the summer through.

To the man who knows that the real life of a people is comprehended only when he can converse with them in their native tongue, will be given the key to the heart of Latin America. For lack of that knowledge that key is not quite yet ours. "If they knew us better we should be better friends;" the Latin- and English-speaking Americas are each entitled to say that of each other. Only by the establishment of a scientific and cultural centre where the best of the America of the North may mingle with that of the South shall we ever work out our tropical problem. But it must be worked out in the tropics. Lectures, books, statistics, even the study of an exotic language, are more or less dead, things. A university where tropical problems are worked out under Northern skies is merely a dissecting room. The life of the tropics must be lived and our senses must be sharpened to receive new impressions before we can hope to realize the benefits of a healthy Latin America or understand the vagaries that differentiate it from the normal.

Porto Rico lies midway between North and South America, standing at the eastern entrance to the Caribbean Sea, and at the gate to the Pacific through the Canal. It is 1,000 miles from Havana and Panama; from 1,400 to 1,800 miles from