The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1898-10-31
THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS.

vertical sun are those who are there noW and that
white men cannot colonize there and rear families.
Criticism of this statement is natural since our &C
QUESTION of land in the American and Asat1c tropics
has been continually analogized by its advocates with
our territorial expansion this continent and within
the temperate zone. 1t is NATURAL under the circum-
stances for our people to look upon the tropical
islands as new territory, upon which they will settle
and found states and Anglo Saxon institutions.
The En- glish Government has done everything to
encourage marriage between English soldiers and
white women in India, but Major General Bagnold,
reporting on the result, says: 1--WE have never
ceeded in raising enough male children to keep the
regiment supplied with drumrners and ppers." DR..
Orgeas reports from French Guiana that 4I8 mar
rages were made there between Europeans from 1889
to 1882 OF these unions 2I5 chldless. The Oft
spring of the remaining 2o3 numbered 400 children OF
whom only I4 survived to represent the posterty OF
$50 married Europeans These survivors were almost
uniformly with small skulls, stunted in their
growth, wrnkled and afflicted with manifold defor-
mites.
Max Nordau says: "The most virile and warlike
white peoples degenerate in the tropics in few gen
eratons, until they become so feeble and indoent,
so stupid and cowardly, so incapable of any resist
vice and ruinous habits, that they are IN time
scarcely more than shadows of their fathers and an
cestors if they do not die out entirely from barren
ness and disease This the fate of the noble Van
dals in hot climate As Germanic giants they con-
quered Carthage and hundred years later as whining
weaklings they were driven out by the wretched By
zantnes. The phenomenon is observed to-day
whenever tropical country is subdued by people OF
the Caucasian race. The Caucasian settlers between
the tropics therefore, doomed to deterioration;
they not only fail to advance the civilization they
brought with them, they even lose it entirely, and
soon have nothing left of their birthright but de-
based language and the selfconceit OF the caste none
Of whose distinctive features physical or intellectual,
have been retained
The same writer, supposing progressive and con-
tnuous yielding to the temptations OF tropical con-
quest continues
In the presence of these degenerate starveings the
vigorous immigrants entertain scruples, and the
feeble resistance the former able to oppose is not
worthy OF consideration. A new stratum OF human
beings, needing land and sustenance, therefore
spreads these lands bathed in the suns most
fervd rays, burying beneath it the previous layer
which has been dried up and resumng the Intellectual
battle with the climate. The equatorial regions will
therefore perform the same function in the history of
man as in meteorology. In the way the cold
waters of the poles flow toward the equator, evaporate
there, and are sent back in the form of vapors and
clouds; in the same way the oceans surface is low
cred by this evaporation, which lowering must be
counteracted by the arrival of waters from the
cold regions; in the way finally, as the waters
OF all the oceans thus kept in constant motion, the
respective rainfall upon the whole earth reuated and
the remotest lands made fertile, the ST
the older civilized countries will flow to
perish there, evaporate as it WERE and be
constant, flowing stream. The equator
fearful caldron in which human flesh
evaporate 1t will be a revival Of the ane
Tba 81 he
cast portion of their children into the jay rs
fiery furnace; and thus manage to retain !. Il in
which to prosper and develop themselves. The pic
ture is horrible; the reality however, IS not. For it
is not painful death to which the children of the
nations are condemned life of luxurious
smiles invngly before them in the tropical climes;
soft breezes and waves envelop them; field and
forest offer them food in abundance without compul
sion; existence seems easier and more delightful to
them there than to their fathers and brothers the
refractory home soil; and with sweet, burning
kisses, to which they yield themselves in volup-
tuous ecstacy the sun drains their life from every
PORE 1t is death which every effemnate nature will
prefer the rude struggle for existence it is melt
ing and dissoving away, which is as delightful as an
opium Dream and which is more likely to arouse
envy then pity.
Nordau, while ndulging in speculation to degree,
it will be seen is guided by the known physical facts
presented by the tropics The white race enters them
to die The decay of Spanish virlity and current
events enforce the lesson. Nordau wrote in 1885,
thirteen years before our tropical war with Spain
We met her under vertical sun, where she has as
serted empire for three hundred years, to find her
blood mongrelized or degenerated her language de-
based and her people incapable of resistance If we
try to take her place take it with all the rrevocabe
curses OF nature upon it, and under the peculiar law.
that dominates the Anglo Saxon, which orbds to his
blood successful mongrezing with the inferior races
Spain has existed so long in the tropics by that Pc
culiary of the Vandalzed and Gothczed Latin races
that their blood can flow with that of the lower dark
and tropical races. Ours cannot
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THE EFFECT OF MAGNETISM.