native servant and commanded:

"Juan, va fetch the caballo from the prado and--and--oh, saddle
and bridle him. Damn such a language anyway! I'm sorry I ever
learned it."

This is capped on the Zone by another that is not only true but
strikingly typical. An American boss who had been much annoyed by
unforeseen absences of his workmen pounced upon one of his
Spaniards one morning crying:

"When you know por la noche that you're not going to trabaja por
la manana why in--don't you habla?"

"Si, senor," replied the Spaniard.

By which it may be gathered that linguistic ability on the Zone is
on a par with that in other U. S. possessions. Of the seven of us
assigned to plain-clothes duty on this strip of seventy-two
nationalities there was a Colombian, a gentleman of Swedish birth,
a Chinaman from Martinique, and a Greek, all of whom spoke
English, Spanish, and at least one other language. Of the three
native Americans two spoke only their mother tongue. In the entire
white uniformed force I met only Lieutenant Long and the Corporal
in charge of Miraflores who could seriously be said to speak
Spanish, though I am informed there were one or two others.

This was not for a moment any fault of the Z. P. It comes back to
our government and beyond that to the American people. With all
our expanding over the surface of the earth in the past fourteen