The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 1908. HAYTI AND ITS FUTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 67, 18 March 1908, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 1908. HAYTI AND ITS FUTURE.

For the ca.-j.se that locis assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. Ana the good that we can do.

Revolutions appear to be part of the established order of things in tropical America, and the all-pervading spirit of unrest which once induced an American journalist to inform the world that "peace had broken out in Guatemala," extends its baneful influence over most of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Hayti is no exception to this depressing record. The island is beautiful, and endowed with immensely valuable natural resources; but it is inhabited by negroes whose ancestors once were slaves. For a whole century they have been playing at royalty and government and politics, and they have conclusively proved to the rest of the world that they are not able to control themselves or manage their own affairs. Like all negroes they are easy-going, and good natured, and in a climate in which, as an American writer says, "it takes force of character even to drink lemonade," one would hardly expect to meet with furious outbursts of revolutionary violence, in which tho natives, usually so placid and leisurely, "rage with the; energy of bloodthirsty beasts, and wreck their slothful paradise." Yet so it has been throughout Hayti's history, and the temporary cessation from plots and seditions during recent years has been due simply to fatigue. "Hayti," wrote an observant traveller two years ago, ''is panting for breath now. She would dearly love a revolution, but from sheer exhaustion' she must forego the pastime." Apparently the enforced rest has given her people renewed strength for their favourite occupation, and so the citizens of Port-au-Prince are being summarily seized and shot by administrative order at | the will of the Government of the day. The decadence of Hayti dates from the expulsion of its French owners. The civilisation introduced by the luxurious planters has been blotted out. "Without the white man the blacks have been gradually sinking to the original savagery of the African jungle." The gifts of liberty and autonomy were too heavy a responsibility for them to support. Every election is the excuse for furious contests, in which the different candidates hunt each other down, ravaging the country as they go. Heavy export duties have strangled the island's industries, and a debased currency has ruined its finance. The few men who have ventured to farm in anything like a progressive way have found themselves constantly haled away to military service, and have seen their lands fall a prey to the ravaging hordes of armed politicians. The country will grow all known tropical products; and her cacao, cotton, sugar and coffee, not to mention timber and minerals, would soon bring Hayti wealth if properly developed. But there are no public works; there is no education, there is no security for capital; and so the land languishes into decay, except when it is convulsed by a sudden outbreak of sanguinary passion. Even the breaking up of the old plantations, which might have been supposed to give tho negroes a chance of cultivating the soil successfully in small holdings, lias been a failure. Without capital or co-operation, peasant proprietorship can never be a success; and most of the land is now given up to "squatters," or is even reverting to the desolation of the primitive bush from which its French masters, with so much toil and outlay, had once reclaimed it. Under such conditions it might be expected that the negro republic would long since have fallen a prey to any European Power enterprising enough to exploit it, without rousing the suspicion of rivals. But the negroes, without any diplomatic ability or capacity for selfdefence, have been protected by their innate fear of the .white man. They want no Europeans in Hayti, and it has required the most persistent efforts of French and German and American traders to secure a foothold in this jealously-guarded island. Hitherto the Germans have been more successful than their competitors; but the Americans have now begun to make headway. Its position and the direction taken by its foreign trade render Hayti of genuine importance to the United States, and three years ago an American mining expert, backed by all the pressure mid influence the Washington Government could exert, succeeded in extracting from the President of tho republic a concession for a railway through the mountains to the coast. The Germans are said to have spent money lavishly to defeat this .project, but Nord Alexis, the. President—a. man nearly, ninety

years old, but still able to manage his unruly subjects—took sides with the Americans. The Senate broke up so as to postpone the bill, but the President sent an armed guard to the members' houses to escort them back to the capital, and so the concession was passed. This laid the foundation.of American influence at Port-au-Prince, and though the United States have officially disclaimed any. desire to interfere at the present juncture, it is certain that neither President Roosevelt nor Congress will be content to see the future of the island wrecked by the suieidul folly of the natives, or allow America to be ousted from the post of vantage she has so recently secured in a sphere of action so near her own shores.