Jan.
'THE Spectator, if we remember rightly—not the Spectator of Addison, but the Spectator of Wellington' St., Strand, which under a series of able Editors has achieved and retains a leading position in the rank of London weeklies—introduced the custom of prefacing its regular articles with three pages of notes on the topics of the week. Anybody who has anything to say can write a leading article, and many can do it agreeably who have nothing to say, but it requires a special talent to write a series of notes, brief, crisp, and each with a point to them. The New York Nation is one of the numerous weeklies that has followed the Spectator's lead, and its Editor is one of those who have a talent for writing incisive notes, though his pen is not often dipped in honey. 'The last issue of the Nation in November last has an unusually interesting—for no writer can always keep on the same level—set of these notes. The first touches on President McKinley's announcement' of his intention to establish "the open-door" policy in the Philippines, and the Nation points out that "no such functions jas establishing systems of taxation for large extents of territory were ever dreamed of for him by. the framers of the government.... The powers of legislation which we never expected would go beyond the eneral order of an army in_ the field, are now becoming those of the President in time of peace ruling a conquered population."
The next. note deals with the danger to a republic of foreign conquest, "the slow dry-rot which prepares' communities. for the loss of liberty merely through weariness." Why the Americans should be more exposed to this danger than the English have been, the tion does not explain. In the next note it 1s mentioned that General Woodford, who was U.S. Minister to Spain before the war, stated at Boston that the Spanish were then actually preparing to withdraw from Cuba at the instance of President McKinley, and that it was his "d: tberate belief that had the Maine not been blown up in the harbour of Havana, and had
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.