Von Gartenlaube's forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and
Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of
Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a
superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land
fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff,
organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000
men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent
squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the
navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home
waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to
acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary
as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no
longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was
prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had
risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white
city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good
architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for
decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets
had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted,
squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads
built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine
bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely
surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send
to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera
brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was
much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the
Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The
Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks
to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the
latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born