The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-06-09
The WHITE MAN
in The TROPICS.

| The thesis Of Benjamin Kidd, in his
| recent book on The Control of the
| Tropics" that the white races canno,
| live and form self-gOverning c0mmuni-
! ties n hot climates, is regarded by
| the editor of Appleton's Populac Sci
ence Monthly as equivalent to the
| proposition that freedom is limited by
climate, and against this he protests.
| as an assertion directly contrary to all
! the congratulations of modern social
| science. Mr.. Kidd, it will be remem-
| bered, points out that, although the
white man cannot live permanently in
| the tropics, he must control them: and
hence he gives aid and comfort to the
American expansionist. Of this view
the writer Of the editorial says:
Whether Mr. Kidd recognizes the
odious significance of his captivating
speculation or not, il is certainly a
plea and an apology for slavery and
political despotism in the tropics.
There is reason to believe that it must
be relegated to the limbo of a kindred
and popular superstition. Within the
the genius of the Anglo-SaXon for free
dom and the ethnic incapacity of the
Latins for that boon of civilization
Even so great a scholar as GuizOt en-
courages this extraordinary theory
|. In apology for his misinterpre-
tation of social phenomena there can
be urged his ignorance of the law of
evolution and of the hardly less i'm
pOrtant law of the militant origin of
despotism and the pacific origin of
freedom. No such apology can, how
ever, be made in behalf of Mr.. Kidd, or
of any other apostle of imperialism.
Not only have they at command all
the congratulations of social science,
but all the facts upon which those gem
civilizations are based, to prove that
neither climate nor race is a limita-
ton upon freedom.
If climate determined the character
of the political institutions of people,
many questions would be suggested at
once that would be beyond solution.
Why, for instance, should a certain
freedom have existed in Athens, and
the most intolerable despotism in
Sparta? Again, why should there be
well as in Morocco and Egypt? An
other series of questions equally per-
picking can be raised. Why should
there be more freedom in England to-
day than six hundred or even one hun
dred years ago? The climate has not
changed in the interval. Why should
the institutions of Spain in the thir-
teenth century have been more liberal
than in the seventeenth? Why was it
that the freedom which existed in Ger
many before the Thirty Years War
had virtually ceased to exist at the
Peace of Westphalia? Here, also, the
climate had not changed. -. The
only satisfactory answer to these ques-
tons is to be found in the fact that
militant activities always lead to des-
potism, and pacific activities always to
freedom. When people get into war,
the central power must exercise all the
authority over life and property essen
tial to success in battle.
Whether despotism exists, as Mr..
Kidd and his followers assume, among
all the indigenous populations of the
tropics, only careful investigation of
the subject would permit one to say.
EQ,,t hot al
ways exist there, none of the laws of
social evolution give the slightest war
rant. Wherever it does exist, it had
the same origin that it had in Eng
land, and in obedience to the same
forces of peace and industry that op-
Grated against it in that country, -
must pass away. The degree
of heat or humidity, or the luXuriant
vegetation of the tropics had no more
to do with this political organization
of the atmosphere, or the compare
tive poverty of the soil Of some of the
Western States with the similar polit-
zeal organization of the Indians that
physical characteristics can prevent
the play of those forces that drive peo-
pie eventually to the adoption of that
form of social organism that will best
promote their happiness. AS the social
philosophy of evolution shows, the So
cial organization best fitted for this
purpose is the one where the largest
individual freedom prevails.
Finally, the writer argues, the con-
tention that the white man cannot live
and work permanently in the tropics,
on which Mr. Kidd's demonstration
practically rests, has slender basis in